Due to popular demand, git-annex can now be used with bare repositories.

So, for example, you can stash a file away in the origin: git annex move mybigfile --to origin

Of course, for that to work, the bare repository has to be on a system with git-annex-shell installed. If "origin" is on GitWeb, you still can't use git-annex to store stuff there.

It took a while, but bare repositories are now supported exactly as well as non-bare repositories. Except for these caveats:

• git annex fsck works in a bare repository, but does not display warnings about insufficient copies. To get those warnings, just run it in one of the non-bare checkouts.
• git annex unused in a bare repository only knows about keys used in branches that have been pushed to the bare repository. So use it with care..
• Commands that need a work tree, like git annex add won't work in a bare repository, of course.

Here is a quick example of how to set this up, using origin as the remote name, and assuming ~/annex contains an annex:

On the server:

mkdir bare-annex
cd bare-annex
git init --bare
git annex init origin

Now configure the remote and do the initial push:

cd ~/annex
git remote add origin example.com:bare-annex
git push origin master git-annex

Now git annex status should show the configured bare remote. If it does not, you may have to pull from the remote first (older versions of git-annex)

If you wish to configure git such that you can push/pull without arguments, set the upstream branch:

git branch master --set-upstream origin/master