[kwlug-disc] setting up a multi-user git server

[Chris Frey]

On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 02:59:46AM -0400, Johnny Ferguson wrote:
> I'm making this server to allow multiple users to collaborate on songs. 
> There's a program called renoise which stores projects as a tar file 
> containing sound samples and xml files containing the score information. 
> I remember hearing at the git presentation that git is able to see files 
> inside archives, so I'm thinking git would be able to avoid unnecessary 
> duplication of blobs as users make updates to a collaboration.

Ahem... looks like I am guilty of starting a rumour.

I was quite sure I'd seen information on this and so I mentioned it
at the git presentation, but now that I look for it, I'm not finding it.

Sorry about that.

What does appear to be possible, for files like compressed opendocument
files, is to add a command to git to recompress those files with -0,
(disabling compression) making them much more packable.

But in your case, you want to avoid duplication of identical binary files.
If you are able to somehow expand the tar file before committing to git,
then git will indeed reuse the same blobs for each identical WAV file.
But if everything is compressed into an opaque tarball, git will
store each one separately.

Again, sorry about the misdirection.

- Chris