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Re: How it was at GitTogether'08 ?

From
Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>
Date
Nov 9, 2008, 16:31 UTC
Message-ID
<200811091731.48694.jnareb@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To
<200811091636.55343.kai@samba.org>
On Sun, 9 Nov 2008, Kai Blin wrote:
> On Saturday 08 November 2008 16:31:04 Jakub Narebski wrote:
Show 16 quoted lines
>>>> * Tim: Git as a Media Repository
>>>>  http://www.thousandparsec.net/~tim/media+git.pdf
>>>
>>> This has kicked off some mailing list discussion; I think this can be
>>> a major weak point for git, since checking out only a subtree (and
>>> only the latest revision) is the common SVN way, which copes with
>>> media repositories and the like just fine.
>>
>> Well, you can workaround this weakness by (ab)using submodules...
>> ...and one should always remember that casual partial checkouts
>> interfere a bit with whole-tree commits.
> 
> Interesting. How would you use submodules to work around the fact that binary 
> file changes diff very bad and produce huge histories with basically no value 
> for the user of the working copy? Can you do this from a GUI, easily? We're 
> talking about media repositories here, so our users are artists.

What I meant here (but perhaps was not clear) was (ab)using submodules to allow to have full working repository without large [media] files both in object database (repository) and without them checked out.

The workaround is to put all large files for example in 'media/' folder, and make this folder be submodule. Each clone of repository can have this 'media' submodule either present (both in object database, although usually separate from main project object database), or not present (not cloned and not checked out).

As to submodules UI and GUI support for submodules... currently it is unfortunately lacking.

Note that I explicitly mentioned that (ab)using submodules to better deal with large files is _workaround_, and not _solution_. Lazy clone in version proposed by Tim is IMHO correct solution.

P.S. Could anybody document at last `delta' gitattribute?
P.P.S. You can have separate diff driver for binary files, but I don't
       know anyone who uses for example some such for images...
-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland
Previous: Kai BlinNext: Kai Blin
Message 7 of 29 in “How it was at GitTogether'08 ?”
  1. Jakub NarebskiNov 8, 2008
  2. Johan HerlandNov 8, 2008
  3. Jeff KingNov 8, 2008
  4. David SymondsNov 8, 2008
  5. Jakub NarebskiNov 8, 2008
  6. Kai BlinNov 9, 2008
  7. Jakub NarebskiNov 9, 2008
  8. Kai BlinNov 9, 2008
  9. Jakub NarebskiNov 10, 2008
  10. Kai BlinNov 10, 2008
  11. Johannes SchindelinNov 10, 2008
  12. Kai BlinNov 10, 2008
  13. Johannes SchindelinNov 10, 2008
  14. Johannes SchindelinNov 10, 2008
  15. Jakub NarebskiNov 10, 2008
  16. Jakub NarebskiNov 9, 2008
  17. Steven GrimmNov 9, 2008
  18. Jakub NarebskiNov 9, 2008
  19. Robin RosenbergNov 9, 2008
  20. Shawn O. PearceNov 9, 2008
  21. Steven GrimmNov 9, 2008
  22. Jakub NarebskiNov 9, 2008
  23. Jonas FonsecaNov 11, 2008
  24. Johannes SchindelinNov 11, 2008
  25. Shawn O. PearceNov 9, 2008
  26. Jakub NarebskiNov 9, 2008
  27. Tim AnsellNov 10, 2008
  28. Jean-Luc HerrenNov 9, 2008
  29. Junio C HamanoNov 11, 2008

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