RepoFS

File system view of Git repositories

Journal article (2019)

Authors

Vitalis Salis National Technical University of Athens
D. Spinellis Athens University of Economics and Business
Affiliation
External organisation
Mining software repositories Git Unix shell Virtual file system
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Published Date

01-01-2019

Language

English

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External organisation

Abstract

Empirical software engineering work often involves studying revision control system repositories maintained using the popular Git system. Checking out each revision one wants to study is inefficient. On the other hand the examination of directories and files of past revisions using Git's commands suffers from a usability perspective. We introduce RepoFS, a tool that exposes a Git repository as a virtual user-level file system. Commits, branches, and tags appear as separate directory trees allowing them to be efficiently processed through command-line tools and file explorers. We illustrate these points through motivating examples and discuss the advantages and drawbacks of the proposed approach.