Source Code

MediaMosa uses Git with Github as a source repository. You can find the latest public version of MediaMosa here.

Cloning MediaMosa 3.0

$ git clone https://github.com/mediamosa/mediamosa -b master mediamosa_3.0
$ cd mediamosa_3.0
$ (edit files)
$ git commit -m 'Explain what I changed'
$ git format-patch origin/master

What is Git?

Git is an extremely fast, efficient, distributed version control system ideal for the collaborative development of software.

Git is a free & open source, distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.

Every Git clone is a full-fledged repository with complete history and full revision tracking capabilities, not dependent on network access or a central server. Branching and merging are fast and easy to do.

Git Quick Start

Cloning and Creating a Patch

$ git clone git://github.com/git/hello-world.git
$ cd hello-world
$ (edit files)
$ git add (files)
$ git commit -m 'Explain what I changed'
$ git format-patch origin/master

Creating and Commiting

$ cd (project-directory)
$ git init
$ (add some files)
$ git add .
$ git commit -m 'Initial commit'

Read more here and here.

Git characteristics

Git's design is a synthesis of Torvalds's experience with Linux in maintaining a large distributed development project, along with his intimate knowledge of file system performance gained from the same project and the urgent need to produce a working system in short order. These influences led to the following implementation choices:

Strong support for non-linear development

Git supports rapid branching and merging, and includes specific tools for visualizing and navigating a non-linear development history. A core assumption in Git is that a change will be merged more often than it is written, as it is passed around various reviewers.

Distributed development

Like Darcs, BitKeeper, Mercurial, SVK, Bazaar and Monotone, Git gives each developer a local copy of the entire development history, and changes are copied from one such repository to another. These changes are imported as additional development branches, and can be merged in the same way as a locally developed branch.

Compatibility with existing systems/protocols

Repositories can be published via HTTP, FTP, rsync, or a Git protocol over either a plain socket or ssh. Git also has a CVS server emulation, which enables the use of existing CVS clients and IDE plugins to access Git repositories. Subversion and svk repositories can be used directly with git-svn.

Efficient handling of large projects

Torvalds has described Git as being very fast and scalable, and performance tests done by Mozilla showed it was an order of magnitude faster than some revision control systems, and fetching revision history from a locally stored repository can be one hundred times faster than fetching it from the remote server. In particular, Git does not get slower as the project history grows larger.

Cryptographic authentication of history

The Git history is stored in such a way that the name of a particular revision (a "commit" in Git terms) depends upon the complete development history leading up to that commit. Once it is published, it is not possible to change the old versions without it being noticed. The structure is similar to a hash tree, but with additional data at the nodes as well as the leaves. (Mercurial and Monotone also have this property.)

Toolkit-based design

Git was designed as a set of programs written in C, and a number of shell scripts that provide wrappers around those programs. Although most of those scripts have since been rewritten in C for speed and portability, the design remains, and it is easy to chain the components together.

Pluggable merge strategies

As part of its toolkit design, Git has a well-defined model of an incomplete merge, and it has multiple algorithms for completing it, culminating in telling the user that it is unable to complete the merge automatically and manual editing is required.

Garbage accumulates unless collected

Aborting operations or backing out changes will leave useless dangling objects in the database. These are generally a small fraction of the continuously growing history of wanted objects, but space may be reclaimed using git gc --prune.

Periodic explicit object packing

Git stores each newly created object as a separate file. Although individually compressed, this takes a great deal of space and is inefficient. This is solved by the use of "packs" that store a large number of objects in a single file (or network byte stream), delta-compressed among themselves. Packs are compressed using the heuristic that files with the same name are probably similar, but do not depend on it for correctness. Newly created objects (newly added history) are still stored singly, and periodic repacking is required to maintain space efficiency. Git does periodic repacking automatically but manual repacking is also possible with the git gc command.

More about Git.