Hi, On Sun, Jan 28, 2024, at 5:33 AM, Nicolas Graves via Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution. wrote: > I've left git-annex for git-lfs, I'll just add a few points about > git-lfs. > > > On 2024-01-24 18:39, Giovanni Biscuolo wrote: > >> Hi Ludo’ >> >> Ludovic Courtès <l...@gnu.org> writes: >> >> [...] >> >>> The question boils down to: Git-LFS or Git Annex? >>> >>> From a quick look (I haven’t used them), Git-LFS seems to assume a >>> rather centralized model where there’s an LFS server sitting next to the >>> Git server¹. Git Annex looks more decentralized, allowing you to have >>> several “remotes”, to check the status of each one, to sync them, etc.² >>> Because of this, Git Annex seems to be a better fit. > > This is not always true. Git-LFS also has the concept of Custom Transfer > Agents, which in some cases do not need a running server. One example is > lfs-folderstore, which can simply use a remote directory as a LFS remote. >
This is very interesting and could have me look at Git LFS again. >> >> I've never used Git-LFS for my media repository (and will never use it, >> never). >> >> AFAIK this two advantages of git-annex vs Git-LFS are still valid today: >> >> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- >> >> A major advantage of git annex is that you can choose which file you >> want to download. >> >> You still know which files are available thanks to the symlinks. >> >> For example suppose that you have a directory full of ISO files. You can >> list the files, then decide which one you want to download by typing: >> git annex get my_file. > > This is true, but > 1) you can still adapt your filters to ignore certain files, although > more inconvenient, it's not impossible > 2) in practice, I think most uses don't need to. I just now that all .lz > files in a directory are to LFS, no questions asked. > I think you could probably use the fairly new “sparse checkout” feature of Git to get only some Git LFS files. >> >> Another advantage is that the files are not duplicated in your >> checkout. With LFS, lfs files are present as git objects both in >> .git/lfs/objects and in your working repository. So If you have 20 GB of >> LFS files, you need 40 GB on your disk. While with git annex, files are >> symlinked so in this case only 20 GB is required. > > True. This raises a question for me about Git Annex: if the files are symlinks, if I edit a file, is the change detected and tracked? Could the old version of the file potentially be lost, if I don’t take care to have it synced elsewhere before editing? Philip
