Snapshots & Checkout

Snapshots are named, immutable checkpoints of your dataset’s file index. They let you return to any previous state.

Creating a Snapshot

# Auto-named (timestamp-based)
gda snapshot

# Named
gda snapshot pre-processing-v2

A snapshot records every tracked file’s path, hash, size, and modification time.

Listing Snapshots

gda log

Output:

  pre-processing-v1   2026-06-01 14:32:05  143 files  2.3 GB
  pre-processing-v2   2026-06-03 09:15:22  158 files  2.4 GB
  raw-v1              2026-05-28 11:00:00  127 files  1.8 GB

Restoring a Snapshot

gda checkout pre-processing-v2

Restores your project folder to match the snapshot:

• Creates symlinks for every tracked file
• Removes files tracked in the current index but absent in the snapshot
• Warns about unlocked modified files without overwriting them

Safety

Checkout will not overwrite unlocked files that have been modified. You’ll see:

warning: file is unlocked with modifications, skipping: sub-01/meg/run.fif

Lock or discard those files first before retrying.