Re: Why Git LFS is not a built-in feature

["brian m. carlson" <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>]

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On 2020-11-14 at 16:27:00, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 14, 2020 at 12:29:02AM +0000, brian m. carlson wrote:
> > Additionally, in many cases, projects can avoid the need for storing
> > large files at all by using repository best practices, like not storing
> > build products or binary dependencies in the repository and instead
> > using an artifact server or a standard packaging system.  If possible,
> > that will almost always provide a better experience than any solution
> > for storing large files in the repository.
> 
> Well, I would argue that if the goal is ongoing archival and easy
> replication, then storing objects in a repository like git makes a lot
> more sense than keeping them on a central server that may or may not be
> there a few years down the line. Having large file support native in git
> is a laudable goal and I quite often wish that it existed.

Sure, and I think that's a different goal than the typical source code
or writing project (documentation, book, etc.) repository.  For example,
one can use Git repositories to do backups using the tool bup, which
actually works quite well but isn't a traditional use of Git.

The typical use case is that the user wants to store some reasonably
sized project on their local system and possibly also collaborate with
others for that, and with that goal, it makes sense to make the
repository not be absurdly large, since most developer systems don't
have tons of storage.  As Ævar and I mentioned, there are built-in
options for large files that make this use case more palatable with
native Git tooling.  But for this particular use case, it doesn't
logically make sense to store build assets, whether they're yours or
others', in this project repository.

If your goal is archival and replication, then a tool like bup might
meet your needs, or simply a large repository with many objects.  But in
that context, you'll likely have more storage, CPU, and memory available
to you and the need for large file support will look different (e.g.,
core.bigFileThreshold) or not be present at all.
-- 
brian m. carlson (he/him or they/them)
Houston, Texas, US

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