While my example isn't about puppet, it's about another templating technology - that is by technical design hence also completely open source. We have a completely modulirized and completely distributed deployment scenario that is based on git. The fundamental core how git addresses the solution is explained here - especially on the visualization. http://abstractiondev.wordpress.com/git-based-distribution/ I'd like to add a point of view that will underline git behaviour as a core requirement on distributed depoloyment - if there is any issue with big files, that's a good concern to address. While this can be well justified and argued to benefit for possibly platform specific deployment tools such as rpm or msi modules, the audit trail of distributed software (the core requirement for source code andyway) still remains. If there is a "big file" that is part of the audit process, it's consistency needs to be guaranteed. And there is no way around it but the git way of doing complete secure hashed history trail. This is not "nice to have" feature, but critical requirement to deploy embedded software for automated machinery to suffice safety regulations. Hospital, aviation, nuclear device software all apply here. Distributed software processes and projects all benefit from this - and trying to "cut short" some part of the complete audit trail of development will cause larger pain points elsewhere. So is there real problem with big files performance or storage files? Anything else than "uncommon" slowness on calculating and comparing large file sha1 hashes? Kalle -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html