Re: tracking binary files

On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 11:16:02AM +0800, bill lam wrote:

I would like to use git to track some database files of sizes from 1MB
to 50MB.  I want to know does git compress them for storage or not.

Yes, git will compress them via zlib.

If so, what will be the expected compression ratio.  Those files
normally compressed to 25% of original size using zip.

Then I would expect the same ratio, since I believe zip and zlib both
use the "deflate" algorithm.

Note, however, that git will also do delta compression between versions.
So storing N versions of a file should be no _worse_ than zipping and
keeping those N versions. But if the database files have small enough
changes from version to version (which depends on the database format,
and how much the on-disk structure changes for each update) then it will
compress even more.

-Peff