git, $HOME, and large files

[Rogan Creswick]

Someone on here was talking about using git (I think?) to version
their home directory, and I'm considering this again; however, I have
40 gigs of virtual machine files in there that will almost certainly
make this problematic. I *would* like those files to be
version-controlled, but from what I've read there aren't any great
options that will manage anything this large. The files are around 2
gigs each, so it is not safe to assume that they will fit in memory,
since I am not willing to stop everything to version them. I don't
mind if it's processor/memory intensive -- there is a very large
difference in cost between getting up for a coffee/lunch while it
works and actually exiting all the apps. The latter means restoring
state that I can't easily save.

Does anyone have suggestions?

Thanks!
--Rogan

[Patrick Haller]

Try Git on XFS, it should be what you want.

If you don't mind, after a month I'd like to hear your experience with
version controlling your homedir. When I did it, it flipped the
development bit in my head for my environment and now I don't lose my
incremental improvements over time.

Patrick.

Patrick.
--
http://haller.ws
PGP 0x560F0523 = 1A66 B95A 0D66 9087 47D8 1CC4 9077 5028 560F 0523

[Rogan Creswick]

On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 9:12 PM, Patrick Haller <patrick...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Try Git on XFS, it should be what you want.

oof... how critical is XFS to the equation? I'm also hoping to do
nightly pushes to a smb-mounted filesystem.

Does Git handle nested repositories reasonably well? What issues
should I be aware of? (I tried using cvs on my home dir a long, long
time ago, and it was a total disaster because I didn't think about the
implications of nesting... ;)

Thanks!
Rogan

[Patrick Haller]

> oof... how critical is XFS to the equation? I'm also hoping to do
> nightly pushes to a smb-mounted filesystem.

You want speed? Use XFS. You want slow? Use SMB. ;)

> Does Git handle nested repositories reasonably well? What issues
> should I be aware of? (I tried using cvs on my home dir a long, long
> time ago, and it was a total disaster because I didn't think about the
> implications of nesting... ;)

I don't do this; other people say it works fine (i.e. exclude .git).

Also, it sounds like you want /home/rogan as your repo? I would suggest
having something more like:

/home/rogan/etc
/home/rogan/bin
/home/rogan/projects

That allows you to create non-versioned content easily, and you get to
avoid versioning dotfile cruft from various programs.

[Rogan Creswick]

On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 9:54 PM, Patrick Haller <patrick...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> oof... how critical is XFS to the equation? I'm also hoping to do
>> nightly pushes to a smb-mounted filesystem.
>
> You want speed? Use XFS. You want slow? Use SMB. ;)

ah, but I want synchronization across machines. (erm, yes, and I'd
like those VM's to be sync'd too, although that's not strictly
necessary.)

>> Does Git handle nested repositories reasonably well? What issues
>> should I be aware of? (I tried using cvs on my home dir a long, long
>> time ago, and it was a total disaster because I didn't think about the
>> implications of nesting... ;)
>
> I don't do this; other people say it works fine (i.e. exclude .git).

hm... I think I need to better consider the semantics I expect wrt.
nested repos.

> Also, it sounds like you want /home/rogan as your repo? I would suggest
> having something more like:
>
> /home/rogan/etc
> /home/rogan/bin
> /home/rogan/projects
>
> That allows you to create non-versioned content easily, and you get to
> avoid versioning dotfile cruft from various programs.

ah.. I was going to discard this idea, since I *do* want the dot-files
versioned, but that can be managed via symlinks, of course. My
directory structure isn't that far off from what you describe, either,
so maybe I just need to better arrange my home dir. (and make the
areas that aren't versioned read-only).

Thanks for the ideas!
--Rogan