

Tracking an entire Windows sytem inside Git - swapspace
http://alumnit.ca/~apenwarr/log/?m=200901#21

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mct
_Unfortunately, I can't advise you to try to duplicate my setup. I happened to
have a valid Windows 98 license and a valid Win4lin license, neither of which
you can buy anymore_

I don't know about win4lin, but acquiring a Windows98 license can be as easy
as picking up an ancient, free PC from Craigslist with a registration sticker
on it.

~~~
jodrellblank
If you have the requisite large-company/educational institute Microsoft
licensing, you get to download Microsoft programs from their Technet website -
right back to DOS and Windows 3.

Win4Lin licensing might be more of a problem, though.

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nailer
I always wonder if Linus might integrate his projects more. Note:

* Git - a filesystem based revision control system by Linux

* BtrFS - a filesystem with writable snapshots, integrated into a kernel controled by Linus

Might ever integrate themselves more. Ie, SVN commands actually using the
underlying filesystem to store the data.

Git would therefore:

* Be compeletely transparent to applications and users, storing updates and comments in the filesystem as snapshots and extended attributes

* Be able to revision control binary objects without needless storage of duplicated data.

~~~
zitterbewegung
It doesn't sound like it would be that hard to combine the two. Both are open
source projects ...

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wastedbrains
The more I use git the more impressed I am with it. We now use git to control
access and distribution of distributed files. Previously we did that via NFS,
but git was cleaner and simpler to manage access restrictions.

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jackowayed
That's a very unique but good application of version control.

It takes a special kind of person to think, "I'm going to take this thing
meant for code and use it for what is basically an OS."

~~~
axod
I think it's reasonably common to check your home directory into revision
control...

~~~
eru
And /etc is pretty standard, too.

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gruseom
Git is one of those cases where something that begins life as an incremental
improvement turns out to be _such_ an incremental improvement that a
qualitative leap occurs. New things become possible that you just wouldn't
have thought of before - there wouldn't have been any point. Applications in
completely unrelated areas spring up.

Sometimes I think that Torvalds may end up being remembered more for git than
for Linux.

~~~
axod
"Sometimes I think that Torvalds may end up being remembered more for git than
for Linux."

Seriously??? I think even he would think that slightly laughable.

Git seems like an ok-ish version control system - there are a ton of them
about now. Linux was a pretty big revolution and is pretty unique.

~~~
blasdel
Linus has wrought three public miracles:

1) He had the chutzpah to just sit down and write a straightforward kernel for
the 386, with no intentions of pedagogy (minix), research (mach), or
circlejerkery (hurd).

2) He pioneered the distributed development model in the late 90s that made it
possible for Linux to bloom.

3) He sat down and advanced the state of free version control a decade over
the course of a weekend.

His initial writing of Linux is the least important of the three, if he hadn't
done it someone else would have. The remarkable thing is _how_ he kept it
going.

~~~
chollida1
> 3) He sat down and advanced the state of free version control a decade over
> the course of a weekend.

I'd say that's a bit of a stretch. Remember DARCS and Mecurial were both out
when he wrote git. Though Mercurial wasn't that old:)

Read this: [http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/version-control/version-
con...](http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/version-control/version-control.html)

Many people prefer Hg over Git, though I prefer Git, and it was written before
Git.

I'd agree that Linus helped "advance the state of free version control", but
certainly not by a decade when compared to other pre existing free version
control systems.

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ntoshev
I guess the reason he can't do the same with vmware images is that git is slow
with huge files. On the other hand, vmware snapshots should allow what he
wants - to keep several closely related versions of the system and the ability
to start any of them. Am I missing something?

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
I've tried this before with a VirtualBox image of XP. Even the base install of
XP, without any updates or added software, is too large for Git to handle, or
at least too large on my machine with 2GB of RAM.

~~~
ntoshev
According to this thread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=374416>

Git is particularly bad for large files, while good old SVN handles them Ok.

~~~
blasdel
And CVS handles them far better than SVN.

