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Microsoft and GitHub Team Up To Take Git Virtual File System To MacOS, Linux (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: One of the more surprising stories of the past year was Microsoft's announcement that it was going to use the Git version control system for Windows development. Microsoft had to modify Git to handle the demands of Windows development but said that it wanted to get these modifications accepted upstream and integrated into the standard Git client. That plan appears to be going well. Yesterday, the company announced that GitHub was adopting its modifications and that the two would be working together to bring suitable clients to macOS and Linux. Microsoft says that, so far, about half of its modifications have been accepted upstream, with upstream Git developers broadly approving of the approach the company has taken to improve the software's scaling. Redmond also says that it has been willing to make changes to its approach to satisfy the demands of upstream Git. The biggest complexity is that Git has a very conservative approach to compatibility, requiring that repositories remain compatible across versions.
Microsoft and GitHub are also working to bring similar capabilities to other platforms, with macOS coming first, and later Linux. The obvious way to do this on both systems is to use FUSE, an infrastructure for building file systems that run in user mode rather than kernel mode (desirable because user-mode development is easier and safer than kernel mode). However, the companies have discovered that FUSE isn't fast enough for this -- a lesson Dropbox also learned when developing a similar capability, Project Infinite. Currently, the companies believe that tapping into a macOS extensibility mechanism called Kauth (or KAuth) will be the best way forward.
Microsoft and GitHub are also working to bring similar capabilities to other platforms, with macOS coming first, and later Linux. The obvious way to do this on both systems is to use FUSE, an infrastructure for building file systems that run in user mode rather than kernel mode (desirable because user-mode development is easier and safer than kernel mode). However, the companies have discovered that FUSE isn't fast enough for this -- a lesson Dropbox also learned when developing a similar capability, Project Infinite. Currently, the companies believe that tapping into a macOS extensibility mechanism called Kauth (or KAuth) will be the best way forward.
Cool story bro.
Good thing you don't need GitHub to use Git, right?
I've heard of people using git for strange purposes (blogging?!) but for a second reading this headline I had the horrific thought that someone was attempting to create a filesystem backed by git.
Fortunately that's not the case, GVFS (not that other GVFS) provides a git-compatible filesystem abstraction on Windows 10.
Although I'm not a big git fan, I do have to say I'm impressed with Microsoft's recent moves toward open-source and interoperability. If the Linux Subsystem is ever a first-class citizen in the MS ecosystem, I could even see myself using Windows again.
The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches. -- ee cummings
No, it isn't generally fine. You can't have a distributed SCM and break the distributed part. Microsoft literally breaks git. I am guessing the half that was accepted upstream was the part that doesn't, and the half that does break it will never be accepted. Make no mistake about it their approach breaks git by design, intentional or otherwise.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Now MicroSoft tries to turn it into the opposite, asking developers to depend on some remote repository in order to be able to work.
The obvious agenda here is to make repository hosting first more centralized, then more "hosted at MicroSoft", then, once people depend on the hosted service, demand monthly fees for it.
As a predominantly text version control system it doesn't want large binaries under vc that's not it's job. To manage large binaries you can use git-lfs and git can efficiently to the vc and the large binaries can be served via a service optimized for that.
It seems your at-scale is in fact miss use, be kinder to you vc system.
Nobody tell him GitHub already exists and charges money. Microsoft's interested in GVFS is because 1) Git sucks at handling large repos, and 2) Microsoft has a 270GB repo. /. article back in Friday had better comments, including one linking an article describing why they chose Git for source control, and what GVFS actually does.
The original
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