Practical GIT (1) : Manage Repository That Metadata only

In software development, Git is a distributed revision control and source code management (SCM) system with an emphasis on speed. Git was initially designed and developed by Linus Torvalds for Linux kernel development; it has since been adopted by many other projects. Every Git working directory is a full-fledged repository with complete history and full revision tracking capabilities, not dependent on network access or a central server.

In this post, i want to show you how to create a repository as metadata only, it can reduce the size in the repository. the metadata(only) we will create will be like the following :

Let’s configure in terminal :

Abduls-MacBook-Pro:repositories abdulmalikikhsan$ mkdir testrepo   // create a dir named testrepo
Abduls-MacBook-Pro:repositories abdulmalikikhsan$ cd testrepo      // enter testrepo folder
Abduls-MacBook-Pro:testrepo abdulmalikikhsan$ git init .           //initialize as git repo
Initialized empty Git repository in /Users/abdulmalikikhsan/Documents/repositories/testrepo/.git/
Abduls-MacBook-Pro:testrepo abdulmalikikhsan$ vim test.txt         //create first file, edit, and save
Abduls-MacBook-Pro:testrepo abdulmalikikhsan$ ls -al               //show the file ( we have a file ! )
total 8
drwxr-xr-x   4 abdulmalikikhsan  staff  136 Nov  5 12:49 .
drwxr-xr-x   5 abdulmalikikhsan  staff  170 Nov  5 12:48 ..
drwxr-xr-x  10 abdulmalikikhsan  staff  340 Nov  5 12:48 .git
-rw-r--r--   1 abdulmalikikhsan  staff   11 Nov  5 12:49 test.txt
Abduls-MacBook-Pro:testrepo abdulmalikikhsan$ git add .            //add the file(s) in directory
Abduls-MacBook-Pro:testrepo abdulmalikikhsan$ git commit -m "first commit" test.txt  //first commit
[master (root-commit) ae96d7f] first commit
1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 test.txt

While commit success, we move the folder “.git” (only) into other folder that represent testrepo, for example, testrepo.git, it only contains metadata.

Abduls-MacBook-Pro:testrepo abdulmalikikhsan$ mv .git/ ../testrepo.git
Abduls-MacBook-Pro:testrepo abdulmalikikhsan$ cd ..
Abduls-MacBook-Pro:repositories abdulmalikikhsan$ cd testrepo.git/
Abduls-MacBook-Pro:testrepo.git abdulmalikikhsan$ git init --bare
Reinitialized existing Git repository in /Users/abdulmalikikhsan/Documents/repositories/testrepo.git/
Abduls-MacBook-Pro:testrepo.git abdulmalikikhsan$ cd ..
Abduls-MacBook-Pro:repositories abdulmalikikhsan$ rm -rf testrepo/ //remove "old" directory

Next, check if repository is working properly :

Abduls-MacBook-Pro:www abdulmalikikhsan$ git clone ~/Documents/repositories/testrepo.git/ testclone
Cloning into 'testclone'...
done.
Abduls-MacBook-Pro:www abdulmalikikhsan$ cd testclone/
Abduls-MacBook-Pro:testclone abdulmalikikhsan$ ls -al
total 8
drwxr-xr-x    4 abdulmalikikhsan  staff   136 Nov  5 12:52 .
drwxr-xr-x  101 abdulmalikikhsan  staff  3434 Nov  5 12:52 ..
drwxr-xr-x   13 abdulmalikikhsan  staff   442 Nov  5 12:52 .git
-rw-r--r--    1 abdulmalikikhsan  staff    11 Nov  5 12:52 test.txt
Abduls-MacBook-Pro:testclone abdulmalikikhsan$ vim test.txt //edit file
Abduls-MacBook-Pro:testclone abdulmalikikhsan$ git status
# On branch master
# Changes not staged for commit:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
#   (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
#
#    modified:   test.txt
#
no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")
Abduls-MacBook-Pro:testclone abdulmalikikhsan$ git commit -m "tet" -a
[master 5c514e4] tet
1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
Abduls-MacBook-Pro:testclone abdulmalikikhsan$ git push
Counting objects: 5, done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 253 bytes, done.
Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), done.
To /Users/abdulmalikikhsan/Documents/repositories/testrepo.git/
ae96d7f..5c514e4  master -> master

Ok, success!

Reference :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_%28software%29