[[!comment format=mdwn
 username="joey"
 subject="""comment 1"""
 date="2016-08-08T15:32:19Z"
 content="""
There's been discussion of keeping private forks of git-annex
repositories before.

IIRC, the remote.name.annex-sync and remote.name.annex-readonly
settings can accomplish that. 

For example, if the private repository A has a remote B, it can set
annex-readonly, and this will prevent A from pushing any data to B. A
can still pull from B. If A is on a locked down machine that B cannot
itsef access, this guarantees that the changes in A remain private.
I think this is the best way to accomplish this kind of scenario.

If B has A as a remote, then B could set annex-sync to false, which
would prevent it from pulling from A, and so B would never merge
in git-annex branches from A, at least unless A pushed them to B.
Of course, in this scenario, a manual `git pull A` on B bypasses
the protection.

It might make sense to make git-annex merge honor annex-ignore,
and skip merging branches that belong to a remote, even if they
were somehow pulled down. Unfortunately, git's remote branch
name mapping can be quite complicated; IIRC it's not as simple
as skipping branches remotes/B/*
"""]]