back to article Has Git ever driven you so mad you wanted to bomb it? Well, now you can with this tiny repo

A quirk in the way Git handles data deduplication can be exploited to crash most computers with a single Git command. Developer Kate Murphy said this "Git bombing" can be pulled off by creating and organizing a repository of just 12 4KB objects so that cloning it fills up all available RAM and swap space until the machine …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    tricky but powerful source control tool

    Its only tricky if you are a numpty that should be flipping burgers and making mcflurries.

    I really dont get how people find git hard, you learn how it differs from traditional (and flawed SCM) systems, and then then it all makes perfect sense.

    1. find users who cut cat tail

      Re: tricky but powerful source control tool

      Unfortunately, in reality

      https://xkcd.com/1597/

      is only a slight hyperbole. Things can definitely go awry with any SCM, but for truly bewildering situations you need git.

      1. Richard 12 Silver badge

        Re: tricky but powerful source control tool

        I dunno.

        Perforce seems incapable of basic causality, it's intermittently convinced that things committed years ago are new.

        Not to mention CRCRLF. There's no possible excuse for that little piece of insanity.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Linux

        Re: tricky but powerful source control tool

        "https://xkcd.com/1597" - that one is inserted at the top right of an article I wrote in my company wiki. The one that documents the method I used to install the wiki in the first place and update it 8)

        Apparently I'm only good enough to be a burger flipper, according to an AC, rather than a company MD with 20 staff who runs Gentoo on his personal laptop and Arch on his office desktop.

        I'm a fucking sysadmin not a kool kid programmer: I don't need to know the nitty-gritty of git - I just need it to do a job now and then, which it does admirably.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: tricky but powerful source control tool

          Learning how to insert a Linux CD into your laptop doesn't mean you are technically literate. Just like creating a web page doesn't automatically make you a developer.

          I have used many SCM systems over my 30 as a developer, and GIT is by far the best, just don't let numpties near it, they will start throwing submodules and subprojects in for the hell of it, and over complicating things.

          An off the shelf solution like github enterprise or bitbucket server when setup correctly will destroy anything else, including vastly more expensive options from Microsoft and IBM

      3. Voland's right hand Silver badge

        Re: tricky but powerful source control tool

        Things can definitely go awry with any SCM, but for truly bewildering situations you need git.

        Concur. Though one of the reasons for this is not git as such, but the way a lot of projects work with it. If you really want a bewildering situation, you need git, gerrit and git-review.

    2. mr.K

      Re: tricky but powerful source control tool

      You don't get people that find Git hard, I don't get people that somehow don't value work that doesn't require higher education or is particular difficult to do. Feel free to have an opinion about the intelligence of people finding Git tricky, not the most constructive way of commenting, but meh. On the other hand I really don't see what employees at McDonalds have to do with it and why you need to talk them down. Muppet.

    3. Adam 52 Silver badge

      Re: tricky but powerful source control tool

      The problem with git is not DVCS, it's git. Mercurial and Bazaar managed to do the same task without being an ergonomic disaster area.

      Not that I necessarily accept the premise that "traditional" source control is flawed, if you want a centrally managed repository - and most corporates do - then you don't need the added complexity of a distributed system.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: tricky but powerful source control tool

      I personally find Mercurial to be much more user friendly and logical.

  2. Geoffrey W

    Hmmm. I don't personally use GIT but from comments here, and from a few friends who do, its a particularly well named tool. Awesome.

  3. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Linux

    Storm? Teacup?

    Well, as a relatively casual user I've not had any problems so far.

    SVN however...

  4. Nolveys

    Bottoms Up

    I had trouble understanding git before I read "Git From The Bottom Up". The data structure on which git is based is really simple and easy to understand. Once you understand it the front end becomes a lot more comprehensible.

    I do find the nomenclature in the git front end to be really odd. The names of a lot of the commands don't sound like what they do, imo.

    1. cat_mara

      Re: Bottoms Up

      Yes, I think that a lot of the problems people have with Git is that a lot of the documentation-- including some of Git's own-- tries to view Git through the "lens" of other version control systems, and this only ends up making you more confused. When I read "Git From The Bottom Up", I was like, "that's how it works?! Alrighty then!" Of course, people will show off and do scary stuff with git rebase because they can but I'm pretty sure those people will find other ways to balls things up even without tools like Git.

      The one thing I would say about Git is that it's never lost data on me. It's tied itself in knots trying to convince me it's gone, data, dunno what you're talking about, mate, but if you hold it down and threaten to torture its nipples (using the poorly documented git torture-nipples command), it's usually more forthcoming...

  5. 1Rafayal

    I just simply hate git on many occasions

  6. Herby
    Joke

    That does it...

    I'm going back to SCCS.

  7. SimonC

    How much cheddar do you get for reporting that?

  8. hellwig

    Git solved Linus's problems, most of us don't have those.

    People love Git because it's new. People loved CVS because it worked, then people loved SVN because it was newer.

    The problem with Git is that "distributed" is a buzz-word, not an actually useful feature. No system is truly distributed. Even bittorrent had to have seeders and indexes. Even Skype (before MS) had super-nodes. You will have a central Git repository, something that controls access and maintains a master copy (what, every employee connects to "Joe's PC" to fetch your repo? doubt it).

    You can get internet access almost everywhere these days. I've never quite understood why I would need the whole repo on my own PC. I can browse history without pinging the server? Great, and when I see Joe made the change that broke something, I have to wait until I get internet access again to ask him about it. Boy did that make me more productive or what?

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