Consider the case where (for example) a 20GB directory is stored on a computer with 20.1GB disk space free, and we want to put this directory under revision control. A server is available to store revision history.
In subversion, we checkout an empty directory from the server, add the files, and commit it. This creates .svn directories of approximately the same size as the working directory so that it can detect changes and create diffs. The size of the .svn directories doesn’t change over time as you make regular changes.
However, trying this in git (git init .; git add .; git commit) requires that we store the full history locally. As regular changes are made (assume large binary files that don’t compress well), the .git directory grows until it doesn’t fit on disk.
Is there a way to operate git so that it doesn’t store the full history locally; so that it only keeps data about the tip of the branch that you’re working on, and queries a remote server every time that it wants information about historical revisions or other branches?
note: I know the .git directory is better compressed and you can make lots of revisions before it gets bigger than the .svn directory – the issue is that it grows over time whereas the .svn doesn’t
GIT is a Distributed CVS. The very heart of such DCVS is that they store their history locally.
You can’t change that.