Small git Repos are Ok!

I love git. Every project I start has begins with a git init, and most of them end up on GitHub, which is why I have so many freakin’ repos there. Well, that’s not actually all of the reason, although it is a big one. The other two are that I have a tendency to use git for things it’s not really designed for, and that I have create new repositories willy-nilly. It’s actually the latter that I want to talk about today.

I often come across people who group lots of unrelated files into one repository, either because that’s how they happen to be on their filesystem, or they have an adverse reaction to small repositories. I have a feeling that this is due to prior usage of subversion and the difficulty of creating projects on certain project-hosting sites, although I can’t be sure. Perhaps due to the fact that I was introduced to mercurial and git before subversion plays a part in my differing view.

I am a proud Arch Linux user, and as part of that I maintain a few fairly unimportant packages for the Arch User Repository (AUR). Since I always like being able to see just what changed in pkgbuilds, I version all of mine with git and host them on GitHub. All of them are single-file repositories. I prefer to keep them separate, though, for a few reasons:

• If someone wants to take over one of my packages, they can do so without getting all of the other crap.
• I can generate nice changelogs.

While the latter can still be done on a per-file basis, pkgbuilds can contain other files (usually patches), and I’d rather not back myself into a corner unneccesarily.

Summary: more of this, less of this, and don’t criticize me for being a hypocrite.