[glance][kolla] importing images on filesystem without copy?

Folks,

I'm trying to wrap my brain around whether this is possible.

Suppose I've configured Glance to use a filesystem backend. Would I be able to point Glance at a directory of existing images, and have it import the images into OpenStack (thus populating the database) without having to copy them? It seems fairly redundant to have the images on the filesystem, and to make copies as part of the creation process.

Looking around in the documentation, it seems that this may not be possible, but I'm not sure if there's an alternate path or if what I'm asking is ill-posed.

Any advice would be useful.

Thanks,

Rob