From: Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2009 20:44:39 GMT
Subject: Re: How to prevent Git from compressing certain files?
Message-ID: <m3vdlkbg8x.fsf@localhost.localdomain>
In-Reply-To: <4A676D4B.7040004@dirk.my1.cc>

Dirk Süsserott <newsletter@dirk.my1.cc> writes:

> I'm (ab)using Git to store my media files, i.e. digicam pictures (*.jpg)
> and the like. This way I can e.g. comment a series of pictures without
> installing and learning a special purpose "Photo Archiving" tool. Gitk
> shows the roadmap!
> 
> Somewhere I read that Git isn't supposed to efficiently handle binary
> files. Of course, I don't want to merge my files, just store them with
> their history and git-push them to some "safe place".
> 
> I figured that pushing and git gc'ing both try to compress those files
> (or differences) really hard. Works great for "regular" files, but is
> pointless with jpegs.
> 
> Question: Is there a way to prevent Git from trying to compress certain
> files based on their extension?

There is _undocumented_ "delta" gitattribute, introduced in a74db82
(Teach "delta" attribute to pack-objects., 2007-05-19), which you have
to unset.  

Like this:

   == .gitattributes ==
   *.jpg   -delta

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland
ShadeHawk on #git