4 ms·

I remember reading this and being blown away by his enthusiasm. What are some interesting non-SCM projects that use git? (Like wikis, etc)

hasenj 16y ago
github wikis come to mind.
- Montagist 16y ago
  Yea that seems like a pretty powerful concept in particular. I wonder, though, if people'd really care about the ability to edit something offline when they could just go with some wiki that has private restrictions on it. I do, however, really like the idea of downloading a complete wiki, knowing that I can resync at a later date if content in my version becomes irrelevant.
  - hasenj 16y ago
    I've been thinking about this idea actually. Sometimes, it'd be really handy to have blog posts (aka essays) under version control so you can edit them in your favorite text editor offline. At the same time, that could be very restricting; imagine if you were required to use git + text editor to edit/publish all of your posts.
    - Montagist 16y ago
      Having the wiki paradigm in mind, it didn't occur to me that one -would- use their preferred text-editor, but that's maybe a big benefit right there. What if it were a desktop app running in the background that monitors these text files and is smart enough to handle all git operations behind the scenes? And what -is- it about long form writing that is just inconvenient on the internet? haha
- Whitespace 16y ago
  I've been hacking at gollum (github's FOSS git-based wiki) for some time, and I might have some interesting uses for it in the education space that go well past a basic wiki.
  - entropie 16y ago
    I'am writing a gollum like wiki atm. Its not finished yet, but works already and is not far away from a (stable) release: http://github.com/entropie/oy http://github.com/entropie/oy My problem was gollum worked not behind Apache/mod_proxy, so i was forced to write it on myself ;)
beagle3 16y ago
apenwarr's own "bup" http://github.com/apenwarr/bup http://github.com/apenwarr/bup - it's the ultimate backup system on one hand, and it's just a git repository on the other. Way better deduplication than any other backup system you've used, every backup is at the same time incremental, differential and (looks) complete. It's magic.
- cperciva 16y ago
  Way better deduplication than any other backup system you've used, every backup is at the same time incremental, differential and (looks) complete. You just described Tarsnap.
  - beagle3 16y ago
    Cool. When I last looked at tarsnap, I got the impression that it's a smart compressed rsync - apparently I was wrong. bup has a FUSE frontend, that exposes every backup set as a complete file system (also through http and ftp, but the file system angle is the most useful in my opinion). Does tarsnap have something comparable? I'm going to look at it again.
    - cperciva 16y ago
      No, Tarsnap is designed for backups rather than random access -- it does things like cryptographically signing archives, which is obviously only possible if you have a concept of "this archive" vs. "that other archive". (You can extract subsets of files, as per normal tar functionality, though, and Tarsnap only downloads the files you want plus the 512-byte tar headers it needs so that it can figure out which files match your specifications.)
      - beagle3 16y ago
        In that case, I did not just describe tarsnap, or at least - did not intend to. bup _is_ designed for backup rather than random access. But it is easy enough to make those backups look like read-only file systems (bup includes an FTP server, HTTP server and FUSE module that expose a backup set through the respective protocol or as a filesystem). But since bup builds on git, and a bup backup set is actually a git repository, you get all the git related stuff for free - e.g. bup supports cryptographic signatures in the repository by way of git's signing support -- although, for now, the "bup" command does not implement them (so, if you want to sign or verify the signature, you'll have to use git on the repository rather than bup) Bup's deduplication is comparable to rsync's (and it reuses rsync's main tool for that). If you change a byte in the middle of a 100MB file, you'll likely need to transfer ~16k to or from backup (compared to the other version of the same file). That's also true if a byte was inserted in the middle of the file. And if you backup 100 copies of a 100MB file, was just a few bytes changed in each file compared to each other file - you'll need less than 150MB of space/storage, rather than the 10GB or so without deduplication.
vinc 16y ago
I don't want to spam but I did this : http://www.wipigi.com/ http://www.wipigi.com/ a wiki service on top of Git (and Django)... But with GitHub's wikis it's a little useless for anyone but me. Nonetheless it was fun to build and an opportunity to learn a little more about Git (and Django).

hasenj 16y ago

github wikis come to mind.

Montagist 16y ago
Yea that seems like a pretty powerful concept in particular. I wonder, though, if people'd really care about the ability to edit something offline when they could just go with some wiki that has private restrictions on it. I do, however, really like the idea of downloading a complete wiki, knowing that I can resync at a later date if content in my version becomes irrelevant.
- hasenj 16y ago
  I've been thinking about this idea actually. Sometimes, it'd be really handy to have blog posts (aka essays) under version control so you can edit them in your favorite text editor offline. At the same time, that could be very restricting; imagine if you were required to use git + text editor to edit/publish all of your posts.
  - Montagist 16y ago
    Having the wiki paradigm in mind, it didn't occur to me that one -would- use their preferred text-editor, but that's maybe a big benefit right there. What if it were a desktop app running in the background that monitors these text files and is smart enough to handle all git operations behind the scenes? And what -is- it about long form writing that is just inconvenient on the internet? haha
Whitespace 16y ago
I've been hacking at gollum (github's FOSS git-based wiki) for some time, and I might have some interesting uses for it in the education space that go well past a basic wiki.
- entropie 16y ago
  I'am writing a gollum like wiki atm. Its not finished yet, but works already and is not far away from a (stable) release: http://github.com/entropie/oy http://github.com/entropie/oy My problem was gollum worked not behind Apache/mod_proxy, so i was forced to write it on myself ;)

beagle3 16y ago

apenwarr's own "bup" http://github.com/apenwarr/bup http://github.com/apenwarr/bup - it's the ultimate backup system on one hand, and it's just a git repository on the other. Way better deduplication than any other backup system you've used, every backup is at the same time incremental, differential and (looks) complete. It's magic.

cperciva 16y ago
Way better deduplication than any other backup system you've used, every backup is at the same time incremental, differential and (looks) complete. You just described Tarsnap.
- beagle3 16y ago
  Cool. When I last looked at tarsnap, I got the impression that it's a smart compressed rsync - apparently I was wrong. bup has a FUSE frontend, that exposes every backup set as a complete file system (also through http and ftp, but the file system angle is the most useful in my opinion). Does tarsnap have something comparable? I'm going to look at it again.
  - cperciva 16y ago
    No, Tarsnap is designed for backups rather than random access -- it does things like cryptographically signing archives, which is obviously only possible if you have a concept of "this archive" vs. "that other archive". (You can extract subsets of files, as per normal tar functionality, though, and Tarsnap only downloads the files you want plus the 512-byte tar headers it needs so that it can figure out which files match your specifications.)
    - beagle3 16y ago
      In that case, I did not just describe tarsnap, or at least - did not intend to. bup _is_ designed for backup rather than random access. But it is easy enough to make those backups look like read-only file systems (bup includes an FTP server, HTTP server and FUSE module that expose a backup set through the respective protocol or as a filesystem). But since bup builds on git, and a bup backup set is actually a git repository, you get all the git related stuff for free - e.g. bup supports cryptographic signatures in the repository by way of git's signing support -- although, for now, the "bup" command does not implement them (so, if you want to sign or verify the signature, you'll have to use git on the repository rather than bup) Bup's deduplication is comparable to rsync's (and it reuses rsync's main tool for that). If you change a byte in the middle of a 100MB file, you'll likely need to transfer ~16k to or from backup (compared to the other version of the same file). That's also true if a byte was inserted in the middle of the file. And if you backup 100 copies of a 100MB file, was just a few bytes changed in each file compared to each other file - you'll need less than 150MB of space/storage, rather than the 10GB or so without deduplication.

vinc 16y ago

I don't want to spam but I did this : http://www.wipigi.com/ http://www.wipigi.com/ a wiki service on top of Git (and Django)... But with GitHub's wikis it's a little useless for anyone but me. Nonetheless it was fun to build and an opportunity to learn a little more about Git (and Django).