Re: Git as a filesystem

From: Michael Poole <mdpoole@troilus.org>
Date: Sep 21, 2007, 13:41 UTC
Message-ID: <87myvgm8z3.fsf@graviton.dyn.troilus.org>
In-Reply-To: <fbe8b1780709210628u24c14117p5174bedb3d1912cb@mail.gmail.com>

Peter Stahlir writes:

Show 6 quoted lines

> Telling git to handle -for example- deb archives and storing
> everything in a pack file would take advantage of redundancy across
> _all_ files.
> So the /usr/share/doc of all architectures could be compressed.
>
> Right?

You're proposing to trade off lots of CPU time in fetching many files from a pack and making the package file -- paid every time someone requests a package -- for at most 250 GB of space (cf Amdahl's law).

How long are your users willing to wait in exchange for 250 GB of saved space? How much CPU are you willing to spend for it? Compare those to the cost of a 300 GB hard drive (roughly $65).

There's also the cost to make git support the package format, and to maintain that code going forward. Those costs are also large.

Michael Poole