Migrate away from git-annex to a more integrated solution?
Software Heritage currently uses git-annex to keep and share public and private assets or archives for the project. While this made sense in 2016 for a small and tech-savvy team, it is worth considering if moving to a solution more easily accessible and better integrated with GitLab could be beneficial for the project.
While it used to support git-annex, GitLab now supports only Git LFS for storing large files. LWN published a comprehensive write-up comparing git-annex and LFS in 2018. While git-annex has its pros, using a solution supported by GitLab would mean files could easily be browsed and added through GitLab web interface. This probably mean more people in the team would be able to share large files in a common location.
GitLab procedure to migrate from git-annex to Git LFS has been removed from the present documentation but it is still available through the project Git history