this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2024
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How do you feel about storing binary files with Git? (lemmy.ca)
submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I think it's generally agreed upon that large files that change often do not belong while small files that never change are fine. But there's still a lot of middle ground where the answer is not so clear to me.

So what's your stance on this? Where do you draw the line?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

I don't like it, but if they're part of the project files, then they belong in version control. I do worry about the challenges of combining the difficult-to-merge nature of binaries with the distributed workflows that Git encourages. While data doesn't get lost, the inability to merge them may mean that someone needs to spend extra time re-performing their changes if they "lose" the push/merge race.

Game engines have been doing a better job of transitioning away from large monolithic binaries by either serializing them in somewhat mergeable text files or at least splitting them into large numbers of smaller binaries to reduce file contention.

Git LFS does offer the ability to off-load them from the repository, reduce download and checkout times as well as the ability to lock files (which does introduce centralization...), but it doesn't seem to be as ubiquitous and can be more expensive to use, depending on the team's options for Git repo providers.

Note: I assume you mean binaries as in "non-text files", not build artifacts, which definitely don't belong in version control at all.