Sorry to come up with this topic again, as there are soo many other questions already related – but none that covers my problem directly.
What I’m searching is a good version control system that can handle only two simple requirements:
- store large binary files (>1GB)
- support a repository that’s >1TB (yes, that’s TB)
Why? We’re in the process of repackaging a few thousand software applications for our next big OS deployment and we want those packages to follow version control.
So far I’ve got some experience with SVN and CVS, however I’m not quite satisfied with the performance of both with large binary files (a few MSI or CAB files will be >1GB). Also, I’m not sure if they scale well with the amount of data we’re expecting in the next 2-5 years (like I said, estimated >1TB)
So, do you have any recommendations?
I’m currently also looking into SVN Externals as well as Git Submodules, though that would mean several individual repositories for each software package and I’m not sure that’s what we want..
Version control systems are for source code, not binary builds. You are better off just using standard network file server backup tapes for binary file backup – even though it’s largely unnecessary when you have source code control since you can just rebuild any version of any binary at any time. Trying to put binaries in source code control is a mistake.
What you are really talking about is a process known as configuration management. If you have thousands of unique software packages, your business should have a configuration manager (a person, not software 😉 ) who manages all of the configurations (a.k.a. builds) for development, testing, release, release-per-customer, etc.