Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Free space wasting when handling binary files

[Andrew Suffield]

On Fri, Mar 25, 2005 at 08:54:44PM +0100, Simon Geusebroek wrote:
> Because I'm not using Arch for software development: I have to version
> control live-CDs, that is to say complete workspaces. Managing only
> source files would imply complete compilation of a system from the
> kernel to the Open Office suite passing by all modules, desktop
> environment, web browser and all other software needed by users: this
> would be anything else than a waste of time, and it is much practical
> to simply manage .deb files and a set of scripts which would build
> .iso images on demand?

You aren't really doing revision control. You're not even doing
distribution, the most common misapplication of revision control
tools. What you're doing is archiving. I suggest you try a tool
designed for backups; it's far more likely to do what you want. A
hardlink-forest, similar to glastree, would seem to be the appropriate
thing here.

If there is no possibility of merging two branches, you do not have a
revision control problem.

When the only operations are "store this set of files" and "give me
back that earlier set of files", that's archiving.

(This thread has fairly completely explored the reasons why revision
control tools are bad at archiving)

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
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