[Gluster-devel] Reducing the size of the glusterdocs git repository

[Niels de Vos]

On Thu, May 12, 2016 at 02:56:52AM -0400, Prashanth Pai wrote:
> 
> 
> > > Right now, even cloning the main docs branch is a huge pain due to the size
> > > of the repo.
> > > I think that branching will solve not this problem, and might make the
> > > problem worse.
> > 
> > Branching would not increase the size of the repository itself. Only the
> > size used on RTD will be bigger as the HTML for different branches will
> > be generated (so contents is there 2x). Cloning the repository is not
> > affected.
> > 
> > Deleting files (like the presentations) will also not remove them from
> > the git repository. It will stay possible to checkout an older version
> > of the docs from the same repository, all of the history is downloaded
> > once the repository is cloned.
> > 
> > In order to reduce the size of the repository, you need to create a new
> > one, and import the changes without the big files. While importing
> > changes from an other (the current) repository, it is possible to modify
> > the changes on the fly and prevent importing the big files. This keeps
> > the history and the credits for the contributors.
> 
> This is an alternative solution:
> https://rtyley.github.io/bfg-repo-cleaner/

Right, I was thinking about git-filter-branch. In the end, I am pretty
sure that the old/original repository is not valid anymore. I expect
that 'git rebase' is used for the cleaning, and that will change the
commit-ids of patches that follow after a 'cleaned' patch.

Mu recommendation for a seperate repository, is only for preventing
inconsistencies between the upstream repository (after cleaning) and the
previously cloned/forked repositories that contributors have.

> > Where would you suggest the presentations (and other files?) should get
> > located?
> 
> May be an official Gluster community slideshare or speakerdeck account ?

Possibly something like this. But we should have a plan for the existing
presentations too. And we have to accept that not everyone presenting
about a Gluster (related) topic will use 'our' SaaS instance.

> Git LFS is also also an option but we don't really need versioning for
> presentation files. Git LFS will keep large files in a separate location
> and keep a "pointer" to those in the repo.

I'd prefer something like this. Most of my presentations are written
while I'm travelling, so a connected service is not really an option for
me in any case.

Thanks,
Niels
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