Moving to gitLFS (using gitlab)

[impaktor]

We've been talking about the need to move the binary files in our git repo to gitLFS (Large File Storage)*.

*(Files under LFS are represented in the local git repo only has a link to the remote repo, and the file is only downloaded for the active revision, as I've understood it)

I'd just like to announce that I'd like to register a gitlab account for "pioneerspacesim", and set it up as a gitLFS, and see if I can get it running, and evaluate how it works, and what is needed, and see how far I get.

Gitlab should allow us to have 10GB for free. Maybe when we hit that limit we can just host it somewhere else, I assume it will be just pointing the repo somewhere else, or maybe LFS limit has increased by then, due to github/gitlabs kind hearted nature. (One could also start deleting LFS-history).

I expect the work I need to do, in addition to registering a gitlab account, would be to document the changes needed to make stuff work, on wiki, and in COMPILING.txt. Then our build scripts might need updating as well.

The binary files I'm thinking are good candidates to move would, initially, be the folders:
- 432MB data/models/
- 210MB data/music/core/
- 23MB data/sounds/


And maybe later:
- 20MB data/textures/
- 3MB data/icons?

...and future planet textures.

(the current textures-folder has *.ini files that feels wrong to have in LFS, and the latter is of semi-negligible size.)

I'd like to start experimenting with this in the next few days, if no objections.

Just for clarification: I will not be doing any violence on our own master, yet.

PS bitbucket seems to have (free) 1GB limit, and 5GB for academics. Gitlab's 10GB limit is poorly documented, I find info on this mostly in old forum/support posts.

[FluffyFreak]

Sounds like a good idea to me, no strong feelings about LFS beyond it being a weird hack around Git's limitation :D