git/list[1] front-page[2] threads[3] people[4] search[5] about
 

Re: Why Git is so fast

From
Andreas Ericsson <ae@op5.se>
Date
May 4, 2009, 08:01 UTC
Message-ID
<49FEA0F5.2050800@op5.se>
In-Reply-To
<81b0412b0904301216j7ef73870y775cf6d89b5aa71e@mail.gmail.com>
Alex Riesen wrote:
Show 15 quoted lines
> 2009/4/30 Nicolas Pitre <nico@cam.org>:
>> Yet, this point is misleading because when people gives to Git the
>> reputation of being faster, this is certainly from comparison of
>> operations performed on the same source tree.  Who cares about scenarios
>> for which the tool was not designed?  Those "enterprise configuration
>> management repositories" are not what Git was designed for indeed, but
> 
> Especially when no sane developer will put in his repository the toolchain
> (pre-compiled. For all supported platforms!), all the supporting tools
> (like grep,
> find, etc.Pre-compiled _and_ source), the in-house framework (pre-compiled
> and source, again), firmware (pre-compiled and put in the repository weekly),
> and operating system code (pre-compiled, with firmware-specific drivers,
> updated, you guessed it, weekly), and well, there is the project itself (Java or
> C++, and documentation in .doc and .xls)...

Well, git could actually handle that just fine if the toolchain was in a submodule or even in a separate repository that developers never had to worry about. Then you'd design a little tool that said "re-create build 8149" and it would pull the tools used to do that, and the code and the artwork, and then set to work. It'd be an overnight (or over-weekend) job, but no man-hours would be spent on it. That's how I'd do it anyways, probably with the "build" repository as a master repo with "tools", "code" and "artwork" as submodules to it.

> Now, what kind of self-hating idiot will design a system for that kind of abuse?

Noone, naturally, but one might design a system where each folder in the repository root is considered a repository in its own right, and then get that more or less for free.

The problem with git for such scenarios is that you have to think *before* creating the repository, or play silly buggers when importing which makes it hard to see how the pieces fit together afterwards.

A tool that could take a repository from a different scm, create a master repository and several submodule repositories from it would probably solve many of the issues gaming companies have if they want to switch to using git. Not least because it would open their eyes to how that sort of separation can be done in git, and why it's useful. The binary repos can then turn off delta-compression (and zlib compression) for all its blobs using a .gitattributes file, and things would be several orders of magnitudes faster.

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   andreas.ericsson@op5.se
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
Tel: +46 8-230225                  Fax: +46 8-230231

Register now for Nordic Meet on Nagios, June 3-4 in Stockholm
 http://nordicmeetonnagios.op5.org/

Considering the successes of the wars on alcohol, poverty, drugs and
terror, I think we should give some serious thought to declaring war
on peace.
Previous: Alex RiesenNext: Jakub Narebski
Message 38 of 39 in “Eric Sink's blog - notes on git, dscms and a "whole product" approach”
  1. Martin LanghoffApr 27, 2009
  2. Cross-Platform Version Control (was: Eric Sink's blog - notes on git, dscms and a "whole product" approach)Jakub Narebski, Apr 28, 2009
  3. Robin RosenbergApr 28, 2009
  4. Martin LanghoffApr 29, 2009
  5. Jeff KingApr 29, 2009
  6. Markus HeidelbergApr 29, 2009
  7. Jakub NarebskiApr 29, 2009
  8. Martin LanghoffApr 29, 2009
  9. Jakub NarebskiApr 28, 2009
  10. Sitaram ChamartyApr 29, 2009
  11. Why Git is so fast (was: Re: Eric Sink's blog - notes on git, dscms and a "whole product" approach)Jakub Narebski, Apr 30, 2009
  12. Michael WittenApr 30, 2009
  13. Jakub NarebskiApr 30, 2009
  14. Shawn O. PearceApr 30, 2009
  15. Kjetil BarvikApr 30, 2009
  16. Shawn O. PearceApr 30, 2009
  17. Kjetil BarvikApr 30, 2009
  18. Steven NoonanMay 1, 2009
  19. James PickensMay 1, 2009
  20. Kjetil BarvikMay 1, 2009
  21. Mike HommeyMay 1, 2009
  22. Kjetil BarvikMay 1, 2009
  23. Tony FinchMay 1, 2009
  24. Dmitry PotapovMay 1, 2009
  25. Mike HommeyMay 1, 2009
  26. Dmitry PotapovMay 1, 2009
  27. Shawn O. PearceApr 30, 2009
  28. Jeff KingApr 30, 2009
  29. Linus TorvaldsMay 1, 2009
  30. Jeff KingMay 1, 2009
  31. david@lang.hmMay 1, 2009
  32. Nicolas PitreMay 1, 2009
  33. Daniel BarkalowMay 1, 2009
  34. Linus TorvaldsMay 1, 2009
  35. david@lang.hmMay 1, 2009
  36. Nicolas PitreApr 30, 2009
  37. Alex RiesenApr 30, 2009
  38. Andreas EricssonMay 4, 2009
  39. Jakub NarebskiApr 30, 2009

Read the whole thread, see it on lore, or plain text.

$ cat FOOTERMessages come from the public archive at lore.kernel.org/git, fetched every hour. The front page is chosen and written each morning by an AI editor and can be wrong; the threads themselves are the record. About and API. For agents: an MCP server at https://gitlist.dev/mcp, and any thread, story or person page as Markdown by adding .md to its URL (or sending Accept: text/markdown). Details in /llms.txt.