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

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

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)

@b0rk Perforce’s use of increasing revision numbers for files makes it an easy fit for the ussr’s mental model: “The latest revision is 5, but I want to see revisions 4, 3, 2, and 1.” The way Perforce handles branching also fits: different paths for each branch, so branch-a/file has a different set of revision numbers than branch-b/file.

I’m not sure how best to map a “revision slider” to users’ various mental models of git.

@siracusa what i'm doing in my commit folders project (which is kind of silly but sort of works) is numbering the revisions backwards -- so you have branch_history/main/0, branch_history/main/1, etc. 0 is the latest and the other numbers are relative

the numbers wouldn't be stable, but you can say something like “as of 912da3150d9cfa74523b42fae028bbb320b6804f, 5 versions ago”