[[!comment format=mdwn
 username="joey"
 subject="""comment 3"""
 date="2015-08-13T20:47:28Z"
 content="""
Needing enableremote is a trifle annoying, but I don't see a way to avoid
it and it's symmetric with needing to add a git remote to a repo before
accessing it. And of course, the user has to install your external special
remote's implementation too. Which is perhaps more annoying in this use case
where the file is only being retrieved with a dumb http call in the end.

Instead of the current approach, I could have had special remotes
use SETURLPRESENT to record the public urls for keys. Then git-annex
would have something that notices if a special remote is not enabled, but
supports public urls, and perhaps auto-enables the special remote in
readonly mode, not using the normal implementation of the special remote,
but a standin implementation that just uses the public urls. That seems a
little complicated, especially with the auto-enabling, and it bloats the
git-annex branch with public urls. IIRC those are the reasons I decided not
to go that route.

I've added WHEREIS to the protocol. It is only used for `whereis`
display.
"""]]