On 23/12/2019 01:59, Michael Clark wrote:

git doesn’t really support large files that well either so I’ll have to keep that in mind...

I presume you are thinking of the Git-for-Windows (GfW) implementation
here, where 'sizeof(long)'=32 bits, so currently the GfW is limited to
2/4GB file sizes.

The limitation is partly due to the zlib library API which uses 'long'
for stream sizes, though does have 'pointer*' file sizing, and hence
follows the Microsoft 32->64 bit transition approach. However zlib is
able to handle larger files when the deflation/inflation is done in
chunks of less than 'size(long)'.

On the 'Linux' version the limit is a 64 bit address and file size, so
probably not a real issue on those platforms ;-)

There has been a body of work on the change to using size_t for Git file
sizes, but such a change is extensive and may not be acceptable because
of the size of the code churn. I (and others!) had been looking at it
https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/pull/2179.

Hope that helps clarify the large file support limitation on Windows.

Philip