Re: [9fans] FS to skip/put-together duplicate files

[erik quanstrom <quanstro@coraid.com>]

> > does anyone have an example of a case where compression and uniquing are required?
> 
> the compression is nice to have of course but the uniqing is very
> neat. I have always though of it as plan9's answer to CSV et al.
> 
> When you do a release of a software package you copy the files to
> a new directory with the name of the release (the equivilent of 
> tagging your release in CVS) - and continue working. this tne takes
> up the space for the directory entries and all releases are always
> available. branching is trivial (dircp) only a pretty merge tool
> is missing - I have diff3 from edition7 in my contrib area
> but some sort of interactive differencting GUI tool would be very
> hand somtimes.
> 
> have I drifted off topic I wonder...

seems on topic to me.

the extra disk space used for a copy of source should be tiny. 
if you have a 500GB disk (< $150 at newegg), making a several of extra
copies of /sys/src would cost you 1/1000th of your disk space if not uniqued.

the old way to do versioning is to remember the date of the release
and use history.  this also doesn't use any disk space, except for the
deltas.

- erik