Re: Versioning large files

[Kaz Kylheku]

On Mon, 16 Feb 2004, Paul Gelderblom (ptok) wrote:

> It would be nice if CVS had an additional (parallell) system for versioning
> binary files in a less resource-intensive manner, but it probably will never
> come to that. (I would say, make a hack of the rcs file format which just
> contains versioning information and tags etc, and links to basically copies
> of the binary file versions in the same directory. Add a checksum to
> maintain integrity. It may not be subtle, but it will certainly work. And
> disk space is cheap.)

Hey, I wonder whether this is something I can hack in Meta-CVS. All I
need is a MAP entry with a path to the object and checksum:

  (:EXTERNAL-FILE "/sandbox/path/to/it" "UNIQUE-ID" 
   "URI://where/is/it" 13948394894)

There would have to be some clever way of locating these external
files, such as a local configuration file mapping abstract locations to
concrete locations. You don't want hard-coded locations in version
control because then people can't move the database.

You want to be able to do things like give people CD-ROM images with
all these large binaries and then have them configure their sandbox so
it can refer to these local replicas.

When the user does a ``mcvs up -r old-release'', it will find the old
version of the binary on the newly installed local replica, rather than
pull up some obsolete path name to a location that no longer works.

-- 
Meta-CVS: the working replacement for CVS that has been stable for two
years.  It versions the directory structure, symbolic links and execute
permissions. It figures out renaming on import. Plus it babysits the kids
and does light housekeeping! http://freshmeat.net/projects/mcvs