Re: Git-LFS or Git Annex?

[Philip McGrath]

Hi,

On Sun, Jan 28, 2024, at 5:33 AM, Nicolas Graves via Development of GNU Guix 
and the GNU System distribution. wrote:
> I've left git-annex for git-lfs, I'll just add a few points about
> git-lfs.
>
>
> On 2024-01-24 18:39, Giovanni Biscuolo wrote:
>
>> Hi Ludo’
>>
>> Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>> The question boils down to: Git-LFS or Git Annex?
>>>
>>> From a quick look (I haven’t used them), Git-LFS seems to assume a
>>> rather centralized model where there’s an LFS server sitting next to the
>>> Git server¹.  Git Annex looks more decentralized, allowing you to have
>>> several “remotes”, to check the status of each one, to sync them, etc.²
>>> Because of this, Git Annex seems to be a better fit.
>
> This is not always true. Git-LFS also has the concept of Custom Transfer
> Agents, which in some cases do not need a running server. One example is
> lfs-folderstore, which can simply use a remote directory as a LFS remote.
>

This is very interesting and could have me look at Git LFS again.

>>
>> I've never used Git-LFS for my media repository (and will never use it,
>> never).
>>
>> AFAIK this two advantages of git-annex vs Git-LFS are still valid today:
>>
>> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
>>
>> A major advantage of git annex is that you can choose which file you
>> want to download.
>>
>> You still know which files are available thanks to the symlinks.
>>
>> For example suppose that you have a directory full of ISO files. You can
>> list the files, then decide which one you want to download by typing:
>> git annex get my_file.
>
> This is true, but
> 1) you can still adapt your filters to ignore certain files, although
> more inconvenient, it's not impossible
> 2) in practice, I think most uses don't need to. I just now that all .lz
> files in a directory are to LFS, no questions asked.
>

I think you could probably use the fairly new “sparse checkout” feature of Git 
to get only some Git LFS files.

>>
>> Another advantage is that the files are not duplicated in your
>> checkout. With LFS, lfs files are present as git objects both in
>> .git/lfs/objects and in your working repository. So If you have 20 GB of
>> LFS files, you need 40 GB on your disk. While with git annex, files are
>> symlinked so in this case only 20 GB is required.
>
> True.

This raises a question for me about Git Annex: if the files are symlinks, if I 
edit a file, is the change detected and tracked? Could the old version of the 
file potentially be lost, if I don’t take care to have it synced elsewhere 
before editing?

Philip