[[!comment format=mdwn
 username="joey"
 subject="""comment 1"""
 date="2016-06-09T19:44:14Z"
 content="""
Git's smudge interface requires git-annex to output the content to stdout;
git writes it to the file. So, git-annex does not have an opportunity to
efficiently copy the file. 

(All file copies in git-annex use cp --reflink)

My proposed extended smudge interface at
<http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/294425>
lets the smudge filter write the file to disk, and then git-annex could
use more efficient methods. Since this is already discussed in
[[todo/smudge]] I think I'll close this bug report as a duplicate.
"""]]