Light LFS is an extension that manages the duplicitous storage of large files in Git. It was modeled after git-media and Git LFS.
Light LFS provides two distinct services:
- A filter that feeds Git a hash of an added file. This allows git to track changes to the file, but impairs its ability to restore versions of that file.
- Favoriting and syncing services, which can be used to maintain a local copy of filtered files.
$ cd /path/to/light_lfs
$ git clone https://github.com/kayvontabrizi/light-lfs.git
Configure a clean filter, and optionally, a local directory to which large files should be synced.
$ git config filter.light_lfs.clean /path/to/light_lfs/light_lfs_filter
$ git config filter.light_lfs.smudge cat
$ git config filter.light_lfs.require true
Specify which extensions should be managed via the the .gitattributes file.
$ echo "*.mov filter=light_lfs binary" >> .gitattributes
$ echo "*.jpg filter=light_lfs binary" >> .gitattributes
Staging files with these extensions will now apply the hash filter, preventing the accumulation of large amounts of redundant data in the .git directory.
Note: It is crticial to understand that this filter prevents Git from usefully restoring or comparing filtered files (as with git checkout -- or git diff). Please use this filter carefully.
Light LFS allows the syncing of tracked and filtered files to a local directory. This was originally intended for use as a favoriting system (one might imagine keeping a local copy of favorite photos from a storage-heavy remote repository of photos).
This syncing system employs MacOS Automator services to provide a context menu-based favoriting and syncing system.
Visual tagging of tracked or favorited files requires the Tag utility. This can be easily installed via brew install tag or sudo port install tag.
To enable local directory syncing, specify a local path with git config:
$ git config filter.light_lfs.localpath /path/to/local_directory
Now, copy Automator services to enable right click-based favoriting:
$ cp /path/to/light_lfs/services/* /Users/<username>/Library/Services
The context menu should now include three services:
- Favorite (Light LFS):
Stages (
git add) the selected files and folders, and marks them for syncing. - Unfavorite (Light LFS):
Unstages (
git rm --cached) the selected files and folders, and unmarks them for syncing. - Sync (Light LFS): Downloads absent files and deletes extraneous ones. Execute on root folder to sync entire repository.
Note: The local repository can be any directory. Importantly, any files not tracked and filtered in the remote repository will be deleted locally.
To favorite or unfavorite files, select the files of interest, right click and select the "Favorite" (or "Unfavorite") service. This will apply a colored tag (as a visual cue) and add the file to git for tracking.
To sync favorited files with the configured local repository, right click (anywhere) and select the "Sync" service. This will commit staged files to git and trigger light_lfs_sync to copy files to the local repository.
Since the favoriting system is Git-based, most tasks can be accomplished with familiar Git commands.
To list currently favorited files run git ls-tree -r master --name-only.
To ignore a folder (or in a sense, mark it as complete), simply add it to the local repository's .gitignore.
- Make path to installation a git config value (and query that value in the service)
- Switch from python-based copying to rsync-based copying
- Improve service modularity (currently scripts are manually copied into Automator)
Copyright (c) 2021 Kayvon Tabrizi, see LICENSE for details.