From: david@lang.hm Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2007 01:35:13 GMT Subject: Re: metastore (was: Track /etc directory using Git) Message-ID: In-Reply-To: On Sat, 15 Sep 2007, Daniel Barkalow wrote: >> The reason why I say this should be done inside git rather than with >> hooks and an external tool, such as metastore is quite simple: git >> knows about every content entity in any tree of a repo and already has >> a data node for each object. Rather than introducing a parallel object >> database (shadow hierarchy or single file), it would make a lot more >> sense and be way more robust to attach additional information to these >> object nodes, wouldn't it? > > Git doesn't have any way to represent owners or groups, and they would > need to be represented carefully in order to make sense across multiple > computers. If you're adding support for metadata-as-content (for more > than "is this a script?"), you should be able to cover all of the common > cases of extended stuff, like AFS-style ACLs. And if you want to allow > meaningful development with this mechanism (as opposed to just archival > of a sequence of states of a live system) don't underestimate the usefullness of the ability to archive and restore snapshots of a live system. just that ability would be wonderful to have. the ability to checkout a copy of things elsewhere and tinker with it would be better, but the lack of that doesn't eliminate the utility by any means. David Lang > , the normal case will be that > the metadata beyond +x is manipulated by ordinary users in some way > other than modifying their working directory. So the normal case here > will be like working on a filesystem that doesn't support symlinks or an > executable bit when this is important content.