Putting a complete file system in a version control system

Question

I am currently working on a PXE boot environment that I would like to contribute to version control.

The file system and server will be Linux (SLES, if you know).

I considered using some kind of hack that retains file ownership / permissions through getfacl -R -P, but this does not apply to symbolic links or devices. And this is disgusting.

Difficult things I need to cover:

• file ownership
• File Permissions (No ACLs)
• devices
• symbolic links

Are there any version control systems that will cover my needs?

Note. Instead of “block volume”, I need to put the “file set” in the revision control and save the individual changes.

Answer 1

I'm sure Perforce will handle all of these things. I believe that another group at work uses it for almost the same purpose as you (keeping the Linux option for the embedded device).

Answer 2

etckeeper is a tool that places the contents of / etc in a version control (with a choice of version control systems). It has a layer on top that takes care of permissions, symbolic links, etc. I'm not sure if it handles device nodes - maybe not, but it could probably be easily expanded for this.

You may find that this tool can be adapted to handle the entire file system.

Answer 3

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• NILFS
• Ext3cow

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Answer 4

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