git annex - how to verify 2 repositories are exactly identical How can I ensure that when I clone, sync, and get content from another git annex repository that I have setup an identical mirror? I have used a tool like unison in the past which did a file to file comparison, but that is time and memory intensive. Are there any other alternatives so I can perform a sanity check? The main motivation for this is that I just made a clone of an existing repository it is smaller. I expect it to be smaller because the old repository has unused or unreferenced objects, but it is quite a bit different in size. So, I'd like to have some check I can run.

I verified git annex works as expected by doing the following:

1. get a sorted, unique file listing including .git contents (this ensures we have all of the git annex contents)
2. get a sorted, unique link listing including .git contents (this ensures we have the same repository structure)
3. compare file listings, ignore annex/transfer directory, git objects may be different, git annex contents should be identical
4. compare link listings, should be identical
5. run a git annex fsck or compare the checksum for all files (this is a file system issue)



This works, but can be a bit labor / time intensive. Additionally, the process can be complicated further by having mirrors that are only partial copies. For those mirrors, you need to only compare the content that you are expecting to have.