has anyone made a read-only FUSE filesystem for a git repository where every commit is a folder and the folder contains all the files in that commit?

the idea is that you could just run `cd COMMIT_ID` and poke around instead of checking out the commit

and maybe the branches could be symbolic links to the commit folders?

guys this is such a fun idea I cannot believe people are in the replies trying to explain to me why they think it is impractical

the whole point of computers is to do impractical things and see what happens

seems like the answer is yes!

- https://github.com/fanzeyi/giblefs (fuse implementation in rust where every commit is a folder)
- https://orib.dev/git9.html (for plan 9)

would love to hear about any others

GitHub - fanzeyi/giblefs: Mapping a Git repository as a virtual filesystem

Mapping a Git repository as a virtual filesystem. Contribute to fanzeyi/giblefs development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub

ok I got extremely nerd sniped and made my own version of this “filesystem where every git commit is a folder" thing https://github.com/jvns/git-commit-folders

I wrote a FUSE version and an NFS version that I think will be easier for mac users to use. it definitely does not work on windows.

it probably has about 5 million bugs but it seems to kind of work

GitHub - jvns/git-commit-folders

Contribute to jvns/git-commit-folders development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub

the main reason I've found this "all your git commits are folders" feature to be useful is for searching past code: I can run `grep someFunction branch_histories/main/*/commit.go` to find the old version of someFunction I deleted. There are other ways to do that in git but this is easier.

or if I want to just quickly look at a file on another branch to copy a line from it, I can run `vim branches/other-branch/go.mod`

curious about other use cases

(from https://github.com/jvns/git-commit-folders)

GitHub - jvns/git-commit-folders

Contribute to jvns/git-commit-folders development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub
@b0rk this is super cool also for a use-case I have where I sometimes need to access older versions of a data file that gets overwritten daily. Current process uses a hacky temp-checkout method, but your work makes it possible to just use `fd`/`find`!
@hrbrmstr @b0rk it can be done with git show <revision>:full/path/to/file , but I always have to google the syntax and it's annoying that tab completion doesn't work (since you need to specify the full path from root instead of current folder)
@rpetre aye that’s the hack I’ve been using in an R function wrapper. This is much cleaner