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I have seen people talking about Github as a repository for source code and I myself use Github for distributed version control, but one thing I didn't understand is why don't people use it for sharing video and audio files?

Sure, the compression takes long time (It took 10 minutes for a small 5MB mp3 file for me), but it's actually possible to upload files like that right?

Note: I know that we can compress audio and video into a format like tar and upload it painlessly on Github, but that's not what I am really concerned about.

Question

  • What in Github makes it really bad place to use it for cloud storage? Is it just that delta compression process that makes it a bad option?
  • What is the maximum storage space that Github offers for free accounts?
  • Is there any way we can hack Github commands, using which we can use Github like Dropbox? (may be by disabling compression, or something like that)

Any help in understanding Git with respect to this question will be appreciated. Thanks!

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git is a version control program for text document, not a binary compression tool. – Sathya♦ Jan 15 at 11:39
@Sathya: I think Github uses the delta compression to check differences between previous and current versions and version controls them accordingly. Whereas Dropbox uses the same to check differences, and then synchronizes both of them. I think Dropbox removes older versions of the file, unlike Git where we can revert back to older versions. I can't understand why people don't use Git like their Dropbox. I think it can do what Dropbox does, at least theoretically. Doesn't git version control using pretty much same algorithms? Correct me if I am wrong here. – Forbidden Overseer Jan 15 at 12:03
github is a front-end for git - and I really, really doubt it uses delta compressions and what not - all that is done by git, which is why it's an excellent tool for comparing text, not images & other binary data. Dropbox stores revision history of your data as well - 30 days on a free account with an option to store permanently. Theoretically it might seem both do the same, the underlying techniques are pretty different. It's important to note that Dropbox is a sync tool, while git is a version control tool. They aren't the same. – Sathya♦ Jan 15 at 12:10
@Sathya: Yeah, I know that github is a front end for git. git does use delta compression. You can see more details about it here: stackoverflow.com/questions/9478023/… I didn't knew that detail about Dropbox. Thanks! Yes, they were not intended for same purpose, but I asked this question to know about git even more. I could learn about algorithm, but knowing what git do "that" special to make it specific for "source files only" is a question for which answer couldn't be easily found by me. – Forbidden Overseer Jan 15 at 12:27

1 Answer

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  • It is not as easy as Dropbox or similar services for that purpose.
  • The free accounts can only have public repositories, so you would also need to pay to keep your private documents on there. Dropbox and such do provide this for free.
  • The more public nature of Github makes me assume takedowns would be more frequent for illegal content sharing.
  • It is not marketed towards that goal. Most people would not think of using it for these reasons.
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To be frank, all of them are good reasons why people don't use github for that purpose. Seems like there really is no way for us to change how git operates, so that we could change things we share on git. How depressing... :( – Forbidden Overseer Jan 15 at 15:30
Why is it depressing? I don't understand your reasons for wanting Github to be used that way. – Tom Ribbens Jan 15 at 15:32
Simply because I think git doesn't have any limits over how much data we can store online - for free. Isn't that true? – Forbidden Overseer Jan 15 at 15:34
2  
No, Github repo's have a (soft) limit of 1Gb: help.github.com/articles/what-is-my-disk-quota – Tom Ribbens Jan 15 at 16:18
That was a good link you gave there... Thanks! – Forbidden Overseer Jan 16 at 9:03

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