Should OSF be listed on https://git-annex.branchable.com/special_remotes/ ?

[da5nsy]

I'm new to this project, so please forgive any misunderstanding, but shouldn't OSF be listed on https://git-annex.branchable.com/special_remotes/ due to this project?
Is it just lacking documentation?

Context: I'm currently trying to work out whether to use DataLad or "just" git-annex for a project where code is on Github and data will be on OSF, and whereas the DataLad example for OSF is well-documented, I'm struggling to find any documentation about how to use git-annex and OSF without DataLad.

[adswa]

Hey @da5nsy, ha, you reminded me of a repository I forgot existed. Thinking back to the development of this repository, and the datalad-osf extension it eventually turned into, I believe the reason this never became a pure git-annex remote was that it was the first software we wrote to deposit annex content and Git repositories in a non-Git-hosting location. Maybe also because we wrote it sleep-deprived in only 3 days and then had to recover...

I believe it should be doable to use git-annex and the OSF without datalad, although the necessary code is part of datalad libraries. But there is no documentation on it, as far as I know, and I suspect it would need a bit of fiddling (you'll need the osfclient Python library to do the authentication, and then a manual git annex initremote). I haven't tested this, but if you have datalad-osf installed (which gets you an installation of the OSFSpecialRemote), it might be sufficient to follow the code that sets up the storage remote: https://github.com/datalad/datalad-osf/blob/fcd28d61b059c01cd753456b60d43d8aad9b81d5/datalad_osf/create_sibling_osf.py#L262C59-L262C59. Pinging @mih in case he has a better idea

[da5nsy]

Thanks @adswa! That's all super useful.
Since I have no special reason to not use datalad, I'll probably just use datalad (and it's entirely possible that further down the line I'll end up using other datalad functionality anyway), but good to know that someone with enough motivation could potentially make it work! 😅