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> This is almost certainly a result of trying to have one company-wide monolithic repository that holds the source code of hundreds or thousands of separate pro

> This is almost certainly a result of trying to have one company-wide monolithic repository that holds the source code of hundreds or thousands of separate projects. Correct. But both Google and Microsoft use this method. And I'm sure they've put in a lot more man-years of investigation into it than you and I have!

mjn 10y ago
Google reportedly [1] also uses a virtual filesystem (FUSE-based, in their case) to let individual clients get a convenient/efficient view into their giant monorepo. Microsoft looks like they're doing something very similar here, except building their vfs/monorepo solution on top of git and open-sourcing it (Google's is built on top of an in-house VCS called Piper). [1] http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2016/7/204032-why-google-stores-billions-of-lines-of-code-in-a-single-repository/fulltext http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2016/7/204032-why-google-store...
- bluejekyll 10y ago
  Isn't google's system inspired from their use of Perforce as well? Is Piper Git like, or more Perforce/SVN like?
  - iainmerrick 10y ago
    Piper is a reimplementation of Perforce, because they had an existing gigantic source repository in Perforce and needed something compatible. There was an earlier project to migrate to SVN but that failed. I believe Git was never in contention due to the obvious scalability problems, but GVFS does seem like it might potentially be usable at Google.
cwyers 10y ago
Facebook and I believe Twitter, too. It's almost as if anyone who actually has to contend with problems at this scale prefers a monorepo and anyone who likes to speculate on how to solve other people's problems on message boards thinks it's a dumb idea.
- iainmerrick 10y ago
  True, but I believe a lot of both Facebook's and Twitter's dev culture comes from ex-Google employees. So there could still be some groupthink going on. (Alternatively, a victory for successful ideas?) Indirect evidence: both of them released open source clones of Google's proprietary build system "Blaze" -- Facebook's "Buck" and Twitter's "Pants". Google was actually last to the party, with "Bazel".
deleted 10y ago
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mjn 10y ago

Google reportedly [1] also uses a virtual filesystem (FUSE-based, in their case) to let individual clients get a convenient/efficient view into their giant monorepo. Microsoft looks like they're doing something very similar here, except building their vfs/monorepo solution on top of git and open-sourcing it (Google's is built on top of an in-house VCS called Piper). [1] http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2016/7/204032-why-google-stores-billions-of-lines-of-code-in-a-single-repository/fulltext http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2016/7/204032-why-google-store...

bluejekyll 10y ago
Isn't google's system inspired from their use of Perforce as well? Is Piper Git like, or more Perforce/SVN like?
- iainmerrick 10y ago
  Piper is a reimplementation of Perforce, because they had an existing gigantic source repository in Perforce and needed something compatible. There was an earlier project to migrate to SVN but that failed. I believe Git was never in contention due to the obvious scalability problems, but GVFS does seem like it might potentially be usable at Google.

cwyers 10y ago

Facebook and I believe Twitter, too. It's almost as if anyone who actually has to contend with problems at this scale prefers a monorepo and anyone who likes to speculate on how to solve other people's problems on message boards thinks it's a dumb idea.

iainmerrick 10y ago
True, but I believe a lot of both Facebook's and Twitter's dev culture comes from ex-Google employees. So there could still be some groupthink going on. (Alternatively, a victory for successful ideas?) Indirect evidence: both of them released open source clones of Google's proprietary build system "Blaze" -- Facebook's "Buck" and Twitter's "Pants". Google was actually last to the party, with "Bazel".

deleted 10y ago

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