Re: Handling large files with GIT

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Feb 8, 2006, 11:54 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.63.0602081248270.31700@wbgn013.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de>
In-Reply-To: <46a038f90602080114r2205d72cmc2b5c93f6fffe03d@mail.gmail.com>

Hi,

On Wed, 8 Feb 2006, Martin Langhoff wrote:

> Roland Stigge recently pointed out a use case using very large files
> where GIT has some serious limitations.

That is intentional: git handles source code very well, where you tend to have small files, and it handles branches very well, where you tend to have mostly the same files in different branches.

I am uncertain if it is possible to extend git to handle large files gracefully, without slowing it down for its main use case.

[thinking] A potentially silly idea just hit me: We could virtually cut every file into 256kB chunks. That would not affect source code at all: anybody producing a 256kB C file should be shot anyway.

If the files just keep growing, this should help enormously. If the files change subtly, the diff algorithm should work quite well on 'em.

Comments?

Ciao, Dscho