GVFS: Git Virtual File System

Saeed Noursalehi of MS presented GVFS at git-merge. MS is trying to get the Windows team to transition their enormous repo to git. 270Gb working directory, 3.5M files, 86Gb initial packfile, 400Mb index file, 4k users.

With GVFS, clone takes 5min (down from 12hrs), checkout takes 30sec (from 3hrs), status takes 4sec (from 8min), commit takes 13sec (from 30min).

GVFS is currently windows-only but support for mac and linux is planned.

The README doesn't help much. On first glance, this idea seems to subvert one of the primary objectives of git. Maybe their repo is too large?

nice name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GVfs