On 2020-11-13 at 09:45:52, Alireza wrote: > Currently, having to set up git-lfs in each client and checking server > compatibility is a huge barrier for using it in the first place, > whilst it is generally a good practice to store large files in lfs. > > As a consequence a lot of repos are not using it when they should. > > Is there any reason that we don't have built-in support for such an > important feature? There are a couple reasons that it's not a built-in feature: * First, there are several options in this space. Git LFS is one, git-annex is another, and some people prefer to store large objects in the repository and use partial clone. Git, as a project, tries to be flexible and meet the needs of various kinds of users without privileging one or another external tool. * Git LFS is a complicated piece of software and it's currently written in Go, which is different from most of Git. Re-implementing it in C would be burdensome, and there's little interest in maintaining Go software in the Git project. * Git LFS uses a different protocol from Git, requiring additional configuration and a separate server-side component. * The smudge and clean filter approach has some limitations, among them that users who don't have the external filter installed can commit uncleaned objects that then result in the working tree consistently being modified, even after git reset --hard. It's my hope that the built-in support for partial clone will mature enough to the point where that's a clear win and the need for external tools isn't as great, since I think that will ultimately provide a better experience for users. Some people are already using it. So in some sense, we do have this as a built-in feature, maybe just not the one you were expecting. Additionally, in many cases, projects can avoid the need for storing large files at all by using repository best practices, like not storing build products or binary dependencies in the repository and instead using an artifact server or a standard packaging system. If possible, that will almost always provide a better experience than any solution for storing large files in the repository. Finally, if you do want to use an external tool like Git LFS, it's reasonably straightforward to specify a script to install and configure the required dependencies for your project on each system so that everything just works. One popular location for this kind of path is script/bootstrap. -- brian m. carlson (he/him or they/them) Houston, Texas, US
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