git-media

GitMedia extension allows you to use Git with large media files without storing the media in Git itself.

Prerequisities

Linux/Mac

• Ruby (>= v2.0) as part of package ruby2.0-dev

Windows

• Ruby (>= v2.0)
  • it is recommended to enable "Add Ruby executables to your PATH" and "Associate .rb and .rbw files with this Ruby installation" during the installation
  • Ruby might be blocked by the native Windows Firewall
• Git Bash as part of Git for Windows

Installing

The installation is performed via command line (e.g. bash under Linux and git bash under Windwos):

Windows

$ git clone https://github.com/TWOEARS/git-media.git
$ cd git-media
$ gem install bundler
$ bundle install
$ gem build git-media.gemspec
$ gem install git-media-*.gem

Linux

$ git clone https://github.com/TWOEARS/git-media.git
$ cd git-media
$ sudo gem install bundler
$ bundle install
$ gem build git-media.gemspec
$ sudo gem install git-media-*.gem

In order to use bundle you will need most probably the ruby-dev package installed on your system.

If you have file permissions problems running bundle install, you could try instead:

$ bundle install --path ~/.gem

Configuration

Setup the .gitattributes file to map extensions to the filter.

(in repo - once)
$ echo "*.mov filter=media -crlf" > .gitattributes

Staging files with those extensions will automatically copy them to the media buffer area (.git/media) until you run 'git media sync' wherein they are uploaded. Checkouts that reference media you don't have yet will try to be automatically downloaded, otherwise they are downloaded when you sync.

Next you need to configure git to tell it where you want to store the large files. There are five options:

1. Storing locally in a filesystem path
2. Storing remotely via SCP (should work with any SSH server)

Here are the relevant sections that should go either in ~/.gitconfig (for global settings) or in clone/.git/config (for per-repo settings).

[filter "media"]
    clean = git-media filter-clean
    smudge = git-media filter-smudge
[git-media]
	transport = <scp|local>

	# settings for scp transport
	scpuser = <user>
	scphost = <host>
	scppath = <path_on_remote_server>

	# settings for local transport
	localpath = <local_filesystem_path>

Usage

For an overview of all commands, run

$ git media help

You can check the status of your media files via

$ git media status

Which will show you files that are waiting to be uploaded and how much data that is. It will also provide some help on what you can do next. It will most probably ask you for the password of your server. If you want to not show your password in clean text during typing, you should install the ruby-termios package.

If you want to pull all available media files, run

$ git media pull

If you want to download only the media files in your current folder and its subfolders, run

$ git media pull --dir

If you have added and commited new data to your git repository, you can upload them via

$ git media push

If you want to delete the local cache of media files, run:

$ git media clear

If you want to replace file in git-media with changed version (for example, video file has been edited), you need to explicitly tell git that some media files has changed:

$ git update-index --really-refresh

Notes for Windows

It is important to switch off git smart newline character support for media files. Use -crlf switch in .gitattributes (for example *.mov filter=media -crlf) or config option core.autocrlf = false.

If installing on windows, you might run into a problem verifying certificates for S3 or something. If that happens, modify

C:\Ruby191\lib\ruby\gems\1.9.1\gems\right_http_connection-1.2.4\lib\right_http_connection.rb

And add at line 310, right before @http.start:

  @http.verify_mode     = OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_NONE

Copyright

Copyright (c) 2009 Scott Chacon. See LICENSE for details.