Tracking an entire Windows sytem inside Git

<i>Unfortunately, I can't advise you to try to duplicate my setup. I happened to have a valid Windows 98 license and a valid Win4lin license, neither of which you can buy anymore</i><p>I don't know about win4lin, but acquiring a Windows98 license can be as easy as picking up an ancient, free PC from Craigslist with a registration sticker on it.

I always wonder if Linus might integrate his projects more. Note:<p>* Git - a filesystem based revision control system by Linux<p>* BtrFS - a filesystem with writable snapshots, integrated into a kernel controled by Linus<p>Might ever integrate themselves more. Ie, SVN commands actually using the underlying filesystem to store the data.<p>Git would therefore:<p>* Be compeletely transparent to applications and users, storing updates and comments in the filesystem as snapshots and extended attributes<p>* Be able to revision control binary objects without needless storage of duplicated data.

The more I use git the more impressed I am with it. We now use git to control access and distribution of distributed files. Previously we did that via NFS, but git was cleaner and simpler to manage access restrictions.

That's a very unique but good application of version control.<p>It takes a special kind of person to think, "I'm going to take this thing meant for code and use it for what is basically an OS."

Git is one of those cases where something that begins life as an incremental improvement turns out to be <i>such</i> an incremental improvement that a qualitative leap occurs. New things become possible that you just wouldn't have thought of before - there wouldn't have been any point. Applications in completely unrelated areas spring up.<p>Sometimes I think that Torvalds may end up being remembered more for git than for Linux.

I guess the reason he can't do the same with vmware images is that git is slow with huge files. On the other hand, vmware snapshots should allow what he wants - to keep several closely related versions of the system and the ability to start any of them. Am I missing something?