[[!comment format=mdwn
 username="joey"
 subject="""comment 1"""
 date="2020-04-13T16:03:16Z"
 content="""
All of the commands you ran looked only at files in the current tree,
so of course did not operate on deleted files. Eg, "git annex get" and "git
annex get ." are identical, and obviously the current directory does not
contain any deleted files.

But there are commands that do operate on deleted files, including eg `git
annex sync --content --all` and `git annex get --all`. Those commands will
honor preferred content settings including "anything" when operating on
deleted files. (The assistant also periodically does.)

I've added a note to that effect to the preferred content
documentation. Also several command's man pages didn't make entirely
explicit that they operated on files in the current tree
(although the main git-annex man page does document that),
so improved that documentation too.
"""]]
