/etc is a good candidate [LWN.net]

/etc is a good candidate

Posted Aug 6, 2008 11:07 UTC (Wed) by rleigh (subscriber, #14622)
In reply to: /etc is a good candidate by nix
Parent article: Git Magic

There are, however, people who want git to be able to do this:

  [git storage backend for chroots]
  http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=477942

This is essentially using git directly as a snapshottable filesystem; 
cloning the chroot would be effectively a git clone (and/or branch).  In 
this case, file ownership, permissions, special files and empty 
directories are all features we would like git to store.  I have heard 
there are patches in the works to implement (some of) the above, though I 
haven't seen them myself.

This would also allow /etc to be stored directly in git.


Regards,
Roger

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/etc is a good candidate

Posted Aug 6, 2008 16:42 UTC (Wed) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

Ideally, it should be possible to have a more flexible mapping between the index and the
working directory, such that the repository's contents are of the same type as any other
repository (and it could be checked out as a description), but, when it's used as an actual
chroot, it works directly. For example, it should be possible to work on a chroot image for
some other machine without being root on the machine you're working on; this is easy if the
image is stored with the "special stuff" as plain files that only translate into device nodes
and permissions when in the chroot checkout.

(Actually, I suspect that the ideal thing is a fakeroot/git team effort, where git stores what
fakeroot stores, not what the actual filesystem stores, and you can check this out as a real
chroot image if you're root, or fake it in fakeroot, or as a set of control files and data if
you want that.)