GitHub Universe 2015 - Build, 4 Feb 2016

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From YouTube: Git LFS Training - GitHub Universe 2015

Description

Allen Smith conducts a short training that walks through a typical workflow with exploration at each step of what is happening to your large files and your repository when using Git Large File Storage (LFS).

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A

We have one more present, so they're gonna bring up, and this is Alan Smith and he's one of our trainers here at github. He's gonna walk us through some live demo. So if you want to take notes, bring out your computer's feel free to do so now. Some fun facts about Alan. If you want to go ahead and join me on stage, Alan lived in Nashville for a while, also very musical, as part of my speaker, montage up here.

A

He lives currently in North Carolina and he and his former life used to be a cameraman for a professional wrestling. So if you want to ask him about that, you should do that. So without further ado. This is Alan Smith.

B

All right, let me get logged in here.

B

All right so I wanted to take a little bit of time here, just at the end to kind of walk through a typical workflow that you might use if you want to get LFS in in a repository on github and what that process looks like from the command line and a lot of it actually mirrors what Syed just did here for us, but instead of pushing to somewhere like VSO, we would be pushing the github in this case, but I also want to stop and every point along the way and kind of dive down in to see what get a get LFS is actually doing to your repository.

B

So we can see how how the mechanics of this extension actually work. So.

B

I'll open up my text editor here: can everybody see that it looks a little small on my screen? So let me try switching my theme up and see if that helps a little bit at least.

B

So the first thing I want to point out: is it when you install get LFS it updates your global git config file? So that's the git config, the dot git config file that lives in your home directory. So.

B

So you'll notice that it puts this filter in your dot, git config file. So you have your clean and your smudge the filters in it run and we'll talk about those filters here, just in just a little bit here, but I wanted to point out that this is something that changes in your git config when you install git LFS.

B

So the first thing I like to do when I have a repository, so I just have a repository here called large assets, I've already cloned it down to my machine, but it also exists on github.com and if you'll notice, I have a few images here. So these are all PNG images. I've already installed get LFS on this machine.

B

So what I can do in a repository if I want to initialize it for that repository I could type get LFS in it or I could actually just start by typing, get LFS tract and then I can specify anything that I would necessarily want get LFS to manage. So that could be individual files that could be file pads, any type of glob. You could specify on the command line.

B

So if you want to search I'm sorry, if you want to manage entire directories, you could do that or if you want to manage certain file extensions within directories, you can specify that here as well, so I'm just gonna, be kind of global here and I'm. Just gonna stay track: star dot, PNG.

B

And so then we get this nice message from get LFS here that we are tracking star dot, PNG files.

B

But if we go over to our repository here or I'm, sorry to our yes, we are technically in our repository. I want to point out some things that have changed so when we ran git LFS track, a couple of new things were added to the dot git folder, that's in your repository, so the first thing I want to point out: is you have under your dot git folder? You now have this LFS folder. That is underneath that dot git folder, and this is where all of your local storage happens.

B

So when you pull assets down from the LFS server there actually stored locally here for you outside of the objects folder, where objects in your repository typically reside. So you have two different places that are now stored in this get folder. That's the first thing, I wanted to point out.

B

The other thing here is that when you initialize get LFS in your posit ori you'll notice that you have a pre push hook, get hook, that's actually installed for you, and so this is a kind of a pre-check that runs anytime before you push assets up to github, then last thing. The thing that I want to point out here is that you have this get attributes file.

B

So this is one of the things that I really really love about get LFS is that it's just built on top of the functionality that you already have and get so we use this get attributes file to specify that for all these PNG files that we want to track we're gonna run that LFS filter. So I said we talked about that filter here, and so let's talk about and get filters. So, if you don't know, if you used haven't used, get filters a whole lot. The basic concept is that you have two commands.

B

You can specify you have a clean command and you have a smudge command and depending on which way the files are moving in your repository, one runs or the other runs, so the clean command runs anytime. You check files in or you may know. This is maybe adding it to your index or your staging area. So, anytime, you stage a file. We can say that these PNG files are going to run through a clean filter that we've specified.

B

The smudge filter works on the opposite end. So anytime, you check your files out. They run through that smudge filter before they land in your working directory.

B

B

If you'll notice, here again back to that, get config file, our clean and smudge filters are actually very similarly named. We haven't get LFS clean and get LFS smudge.

B

So if you'll notice, I don't have anything in this LFS folder yet so now that I have my my PNG files, if I am tracking them and I can verify this with git LFS track and it'll list the paths that we're tracking here and right now, it's just dot PNG. So if I add all of these PNG files.

B

Now that we've staged these files get LFS has created those pointers, those Tex pointers and stored those as objects here in the actual git repository. But then it took the content of those assets and now they're in the local storage here and so the great thing about being built on top of git like this. Is it just fits right into the workflow that we already use so now that everything is added.

B

We can commit like we normally would.

B

B

We double-check that sorry about that.

B

There goes so when we push our files, get LFS, actually intercepts them and sends the actual content of the files to the LFS server, which is in this case it's an endpoint, that's listening on github.com and once it's done that it takes those text, pointers and it actually pushes the repository up to github, like you normally would during a regular, get push. But the great thing about it.

B

Is if we view these assets on github they're rendered out and then Rick would demonstrate this earlier, but we don't see those text pointers on github. We actually see the content of the files that we want to see, which I think is really nice and if you're, using the github flow, for instance, if you're doing a pull request right now, you can use all of the rich diff tools that you have for images and things like that so rendering these images out, even though what's stored in your repository, is that pointer file.

B

So I don't want to repeat a lot of what anybody else has said, but I do wanted to kind of mention. Some of these new features in the latest release so get LFS. Fetch and I'll pull this up here.

B

So get LFS fetch lets you download assets from the get the get LFS server to your local storage so that you can switch branches more easily. But what I love is, if you have a lot of different Flags, where you can specify, maybe certain files to include or certain files to exclude so, for instance, if you work on a project with a lot of different team members- and maybe your subspecialty just deals with audio right, you could specify that you want to just fetch those audio files. So you could, you can include certain paths.

B

You can exclude certain paths if you don't want certain files. So I love this new feature because it lets you do things when you have time and then, when you're actually working, you can switch between your branches much more quickly because you already have that data locally and you don't have to worry about pulling it when you're ready to work and one more thing to point out here. So there is, we also have a command which is get LFS pull. And what that does?

B

Is it's a combination right, so it it fetches from the git LFS server, but then it checks those files out to your working directory as well. So there's kind of a mirror between the language that you typically use in a git workflow and a get LFS workflow, so they kind of pair well together at least I. Think so.

B

So a one thing I wanted to point out before before I finish it up here. I know everybody's probably ready for lunch here, but one question that I think a lot of people often ask is ok. Well I have this project that I have been managing through git and there are large assets in this project already, but now I want to convert it to lfs right.

B

So there are a couple of options for what you can do, but something and I have to think Rick for this because he pointed this out to me, but for anybody who has ever used the BFG repo cleaner, you have this option now in the latest release I believe where you can actually convert your blobs to LFS objects, so you can run across your entire repository and you can take those large assets, whatever you specify and it'll convert those from objects in your git repository to local storage objects that live in that LFS folder and in just some of the the test.

B

I guess that I I saw run. Maybe a git repository went from close to seven hundred Meg's down to about 32. So there is some definite room for shrinking the size of your repository, so it doesn't take as long to clone and people can work with it a little bit more easily there. So I would be around if anybody has questions I'm happy to talk to people one on one, if you wanted to kind of go through a more complex workflow. Also I wanted to point out that our services team is over here available.

B

If you wanted to make an appointment to talk about anything services related github related, we will be over here for the next two days, so please feel free to stop by and see us, but otherwise thank you guys so much for coming out.