Source control for Resources/Images

[techpubs_patti]

Hello all - we're using Git for source control, and it's working really well. I have a gitignore file set up that includes the following:

Code: Select all

/Analyzer
/FileSync
/Project/Exports
/Project/Imports
/Output

My devops team just mentioned they don't think storing images in Git is a good idea at all - said it will lead to bloat in the repository and pretty soon the repository will become unusable. I'm concerned about doing this - we have a lot of screenshots in our help and we want them to be synced. Devops is recommending we store images elsewhere and reference them, rather than regularly committing them to our Git repository. Do any Flare users have insights on this? Thanks in advance!

[GregStenhouse]

They have a reasonable point, Git is not made for storing binaries. From what I understand each time a change is made to an image then it is pretty much duplicated in the repository rather than just the differences as with text-based files. In saying that the images are an important part of the software/help, and do need to be under source control. Also Flare won't know to publish referenced files in another location such as a network drive, unless you use a post-publish script to move files around. And then it'll probably give all sorts of broken link errors. So unless you have an unusually large number of images (>1000?) taking up a lot of space (>100mb?) and those images are constantly being updated, I think you should be fine. And the positives (backup, history, multi-authoring, ease of publishing) outweigh the negatives IMO.

[trent the thief]

@GregStenhouse

You're right about that. Even images need version control if anyone expects to always get a true output for an older version help system.