Can I add new metadata to an existing commit?

[cgwalters]

I know I can create a new ref out of a commit with ostree <commit> refs --create my-ref. Any way to also add metadata, like with ostree commit -s -m etc?

[cgwalters]

There is "detached metadata" that can change independently of a commit; however, it's not used for much commonly besides signatures. One reason for this is that any such metadata is inherently then not covered by a signature.

In most of these situations, you actually want to make a new commit that "inherits" from the previous one, like this:

$ ostree commit --base $base --keep-metadata <metadata>

There isn't yet an ergonomic way via the CLI to inherit all metadata. It is however easy to do this with the shared library API.