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idea #461: Using git for storing multiple .blend files



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Written by trontonic the 22 Jul 08 at 13:58. Category: File/Image browser. Status: New
Description
When I work on a project, I often start out with a file named something like this:
cube.blend

Then I F2, num+, return each time I've reached some sort of milestone, in order to save a new .blend.

After the project is done, I end up with a bunch of .blend-files:
cube1.blend, cube2.blend etc.

While this works nicely as some sort of backup-system, it's not easy to keep track of which changes were in which files. Also, the difference between each file is usually relatively small, so a lot of space is wasted.

I tried importing one of my projects into git, starting with the first.blend, committing, adding the next .blend, committing, etc. The result was that I had a nice little comment for each commit and I also saved a lot of space.

Git is an efficient version control system developed by Linus Torvalds, where you don't need a server, but can have freestanding repositories. (as a directory)

Now, if Blender could have built-in support for saving to and loading from a git-repository, it would be wonderful! One could even gzip up the git-repositories so that Blender could read and write to .gitzip files or something similar sounding.

If Blender also had a way to store a thumbnail of the last rendered image (or even render a tiny thumbnail if needed), or possibly a screenshot, it would be so incredibly helpful.

For Joe user the result would be that:
- His files took _a lot_ less space
- He got a comment and image for each milestone-save
- He could actually find his way back to an earlier save

It could also be possible to import blend-files into the repository from Blender, support experimental branches, have a nice git-thumbnail-milestone-browser, support svn export and import and perhaps even the merge-function that git has would work fine! What a miracle that would be, then two people could work on the same .blend file on their own and then merge the results afterwards.

The sky is the limit! git-support+thumbnails sure would be nice :-)


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AdminAdmin vilda (Blenderstorm admin) wrote on the 10 Jun 08 at 11:04
This sound like a great idea to me. Although, there's a "version save", where you change the filename, and there's a "quick save", where you don't change the name and you do it every 5 minutes. Would this be possible with git - packing more saves into 1 version?


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