Re: File archiver using git

From: Matt McCutchen <hashproduct@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 28, 2006, 00:40 UTC
Message-ID: <3bbc18d20608271740m63be7ae9qc49ec944f5131030@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.63.0608271528130.8018@alpha.polcom.net>

On 8/27/06, Grzegorz Kulewski <kangur@polcom.net> wrote:

> Does it (and GIT in general) work ok with file permisions, ownership, soft
> and hard links, named sockets, device files and similar "strange"
> filesystem objects? Do I need any options to GIT to make it work with
> them?

Git tracks data, not filesystems. That means it doesn't handle any of the things you mentioned except soft links. It doesn't even handle empty directories, though I don't accept the argument that they do not constitute data. If you want to capture a filesystem, I would recommend running "find . -ls" to create a listing file from which everything you mentioned can be reconstructed and then putting the filesystem together with the listing file into git.

> Can I for example securely backup or even version-control /etc directory?

With the above technique, you can do both. However, if you just want to back up /etc, you might be better served by a backup tool. For example, I use rsnapshot ( http://www.rsnapshot.org/ ).

Matt