Re: git and binary files

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Jan 16, 2008, 14:32 UTC
Message-ID: <20080116143219.GA22744@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.1.00.0801161622030.5260@bender.nucleusys.com>

On Wed, Jan 16, 2008 at 04:25:28PM +0200, Petko Manolov wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

>> Right, as loose objects. Did you try running "git-gc" to repack?
>
> I did "git repack -f -a -d", but it didn't reduce the repository size.  
> Those binaries are already compressed so any change adds up their size  
> once again.

OK, that was the answer I was looking for; it looks like you are out of luck.

BTW, the main space-saver in repacking is _not_ compression, but rather finding deltas between similar objects (e.g., two versions of the same file that, although large, differ only by a small amount). So even compressed files can still produce space savings during a repack, though perhaps not as well because of randomness introduced by the compression.

As an experiment, it might be worth trying to store the uncompressed versions instead (git will delta _and_ compress them for you).

-Peff