maximum size of binary files ?

[Michael Hüttermann]

Hello,

what is the "official statement" concerning CVS' support of big binary
files? How big can binary files be being versionized without any
problems with CVS? Concerning file size, is there any difference between
plain ASCII files and binary files? I know the differences in
ASCII/Binary in sort of method of versionizing of course .. perhaps the
question a bit different: how big are your binary files in real life
which you commit in CVS regularly and without any problems?

Thank you.

Best regards
Michael

[Larry Jones]

Post by Michael Hüttermann
what is the "official statement" concerning CVS' support of big binary
files?

You shouldn't do it. CVS was designed to be a *source* control system,
not a generic configuration management system. CVS's diff algorithm
doesn't work very well on binary files, so the repository file tends to
grow quite quickly rather than growing slowly as it does for text file.
And merging binary files is not possible, which defeats much of the
purpose of using CVS.

CVS 1.11 has a maximum repository file size of about 2GB on most
systems, CVS 1.12 supports large files if the OS and underlying file
system do (assuming the configure script can detect it).

[Arthur Barrett]

Michael/Larry,

Post by Larry Jones

Post by Michael Hüttermann
what is the "official statement" concerning CVS' support of
big binary files?

You shouldn't do it. CVS was designed to be a *source*
control system, not a generic configuration management system.
CVS's diff algorithm doesn't work very well on binary files,

It shouldn't be necessary to make this point, but I'll make it anyway.

Larry's statements apply to CVS 1.x, not CVSNT 2.x which has a different binary diff algorithm.

If Michael was referring to CVSNT for unix/linux/mac/windows he'd be asking on the CVSNT mailing list.

Regards,


Arthur Barrett