Announcing GVFS: Git Virtual File System • Hacker News Board

Re: Announcing GVFS: Git Virtual File System

#81

Post by pjc50 » Fri, Feb 03, 2017, 3:35 PM UTC

cies wrote: post #55

gvb wrote: post #42

Using git with large repos and large (binary blob) files has been a pain point for quite a while. There have been several attempts to solve the problem, none of which have really taken off. I think all the attempts have been (too) proprietary – without wide support, it doesn’t get adopted. I'll be watching this to see if Microsoft can break the logjam. By open sourcing the client and protocol, there is potential... O…

I think Joey Hess' attempt at "solving the problem" deserves a mention. It is open source (GPLV3) licensed. [not proprietary] Written in Haskell. [cool aid] Currently has 1200+ stars on Github and is part of at least Ubuntu ( http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=git-annex ) since 12.04. [shows something for support and adoption] edit: Link to Github https://github.com/joeyh/git-annex -- thanks dgellow

There's a small but important trap to people who might want to use git-annex as a backup tool, namely that you can't store a git repo in git-annex.

http://git-annex.branchable.com/forum/Storing_git_repos_in_g...

Re: Announcing GVFS: Git Virtual File System

#82

Post by klodolph » Fri, Feb 03, 2017, 3:37 PM UTC

testUser69 wrote: post #66

Why is that so hard to believe? America is run by Donald Trump. The problems with these companies is that developers aren't making technical decisions, it's executives who know nothing about computer science. That's why Windows 10 is such a mess with spyware and adware. Now they have some FOSS advocate who doesn't really know anything about software or VCS but saw that an internal problem they were trying to solve wa…

If there's something you need to talk about, by all means find a place to talk about it. But if what you want to talk about is how other people are stupid, maybe this is the wrong place for that. I hope that you find the healing that you need.

Re: Announcing GVFS: Git Virtual File System

#83

Post by durin42 » Fri, Feb 03, 2017, 3:39 PM UTC

janwh wrote: post #79

mox1 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes they did. They choose to scale out Mecurial to solve their problem. Wonder if they still use Mercurial? https://code.facebook.com/posts/218678814984400/scaling-merc...

They do. Durham Goode (Tech Lead on Source Control at Facebook) just held a talk at Git-Merge about how they scaled Mercurial at Fb. They seem to be quite happy with it, albeit applying quite a few restrictions on their internal users that are not really transferable to the general (outside-corporate) usage of VCS (for example only rebases are allowed, directly committing to master all the time, etc.)

That's actually pretty comparable to how we tend to operate the Mercurial project, FYI. We tend to prefer rebase to merge for feature work.

Re: Announcing GVFS: Git Virtual File System

#84

Post by xorcist » Fri, Feb 03, 2017, 3:45 PM UTC

wslh wrote: post #20

dewyatt wrote: post #5

I think they could have picked a name that doesn't conflict with GNOME Virtual File System (GVfs).

They used to choose very bad names like .NET or COM [1] (this predates Internet) makes searching information very tricky. MSDN doesn't help. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model

> NET or COM [1] (this predates Internet)

What could you possibly mean by that? The .com TLD was introduced in 1985, with microsoft.com registered already in 1991. Microsoft COM was created in 1993. (Of course, "the Internet" in any sense of the word predates all of this.)

Re: Announcing GVFS: Git Virtual File System

#85

Post by tambourine_man » Fri, Feb 03, 2017, 3:45 PM UTC

It's interesting how all the cool things seem to come from Microsoft these days.

I still think we need something better than Git, though. It brought some very cool ideas and the inner workings are reasonably understandable, but the UI is atrociously complicated. And yes, dealing with large files is a very sore point.

I'd love to see a second attempt at a distributed version control system.

But I applaud MS's initiative. Git's got a lot of traction and mind share already and they'd probably be heavily criticized if they tried to invent its own thing, even if it was open sourced. Will take a long time to overcome its embrace, extend and extinguish history.

Re: Announcing GVFS: Git Virtual File System

#86

Post by janwh » Fri, Feb 03, 2017, 3:46 PM UTC

ianopolous wrote: post #52

Couldn't they use git over IPFS?

It was explained in the talk at Git-Merge that their problem is not large files per se. The codebase is huge in the amount of source files alone. It was stated that the repo contains about 3.5 million files. Having IPFS here wouldn't help, would it?

Re: Announcing GVFS: Git Virtual File System

#87

Post by greggyb » Fri, Feb 03, 2017, 3:46 PM UTC

wslh wrote: post #20

dewyatt wrote: post #5

I think they could have picked a name that doesn't conflict with GNOME Virtual File System (GVfs).

They used to choose very bad names like .NET or COM [1] (this predates Internet) makes searching information very tricky. MSDN doesn't help. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model

Their relational database is called SQL Server, which might otherwise be a colloquial generic name for an RDBMS.

They have a product in Azure named simply DocumentDB. I don't think "used to" is necessarily the best tense here (:

Re: Announcing GVFS: Git Virtual File System

#88

Post by cikey » Fri, Feb 03, 2017, 3:50 PM UTC

Can we use this together with git LFS?

Re: Announcing GVFS: Git Virtual File System

#89

Post by wattt » Fri, Feb 03, 2017, 3:51 PM UTC

xorcist wrote: post #84

wslh wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They used to choose very bad names like .NET or COM [1] (this predates Internet) makes searching information very tricky. MSDN doesn't help. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model

> NET or COM [1] (this predates Internet) What could you possibly mean by that? The .com TLD was introduced in 1985, with microsoft.com registered already in 1991. Microsoft COM was created in 1993. (Of course, "the Internet" in any sense of the word predates all of this.)

.com was a command extension in DOS even before that.

Re: Announcing GVFS: Git Virtual File System

#90

Post by ianopolous » Fri, Feb 03, 2017, 3:51 PM UTC

janwh wrote: post #86

ianopolous wrote: post #52

Couldn't they use git over IPFS?

It was explained in the talk at Git-Merge that their problem is not large files per se. The codebase is huge in the amount of source files alone. It was stated that the repo contains about 3.5 million files. Having IPFS here wouldn't help, would it?

yes, IPFS is designed to host the entire internet. You can selectively mount sub-graphs arbitrarily, which means only downloading locally exactly what you need.