On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 8:42 AM, Johannes Schindelin wrote: > > On Wed, 18 Jun 2008, Edward Z. Yang wrote: > >> Clifford Caoile wrote: >> >> > One interesting thing is that "USB memory" devices for Windows are >> > often FAT format, so some install size optimations and features >> > dependent on NTFS will not work.
Specifically, FAT does not support hard links. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation shows over 60MB worth of space saved in an msysGit install by using hard links, which is a sizable fraction of my 256MB USB memory stick. > That is a horrible suggestion. NTFS is complicated, and not well > supported under most operating systems (and maybe seriously > underdocumented?). FAT, on the other hand, has been a stable, standard > file system, even if there might be patent issues in the future, thanks to > our "friends" out of Redmond. All true, except for the part about it being a horrible[1] suggestion. What would you suggest as a reasonable alternative? ext2 with an add-on Windows driver? Not everyone has permission to install drivers on their Windows boxes. > I hope you no longer suggest that, then, unless you are only ever > interested in supporting Windows, in which case I am no longer interested. I'm curious. What platforms other than Windows do you expect to run msysGit's git*.exe binaries? Peter Harris [1] Merely poor, but less bad than FAT, really. Maybe it's a "necessary evil suggestion"?
