Mounting Git commits as folders with NFS

Mounting Git commits as folders with NFS(jvns.ca)

37 points by pvtmert 2 days ago | 23 comments

> None of these are the most efficient way to do this (you can use git show and git log -S or maybe git grep to accomplish something similar), but personally I always forget the syntax and navigating a filesystem feels easier to me.

i feel like some of the old-school commands will benefit from long args, e.g., '--search'. at the time of writing, the current `git log` documentation[1]'s `-S' has _one_ instance of the word 'search'.

(un)related to the article, author went on to contribute documentation updates to git, which were much needed [2]

[1]: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-log#Documentation/git-log.txt--... [2]: https://jvns.ca/blog/2026/01/08/a-data-model-for-git/

js2 1 hour ago | |

What, you didn't know to search for pickaxe!? :-)

Meanwhile, --grep searches the log message. Yeah, the git CLI is an ergonomic nightmare and I've been using it since the very beginning.

FWIW, I can't think of a single time I've wanted to use -S instead of -G.

chungy 1 hour ago |

Related: Fossil has a `fusefs` subcommand: https://fossil-scm.org/home/help/fusefs

The DIRECTORY/checkins/ directory doesn't list out anything by itself, but you can look things up by any of the supported checkin names (hash, tag, branch, date...): https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/checkin_names.wiki

Someone 2 days ago |

FTA: “problem 1: webdav or NFS?

The two filesystems I could that were natively supported by Mac OS were WebDav and NFS. I couldn’t tell which would be easier to implement so I just tried both”

I might find out that it is incomplete, buggy or a nuisance to use, but FSKit (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/FSKit) would be my first choice.

blaz0 1 hour ago | |

macOS actually has an excellent SMB client, so the options actually are: WebDAV, NFS (3.0 and 4.0), SMB, FSKit.

oefrha 1 hour ago | | |

By excellent do you mean bearable? macOS’s SMB stack is certainly not excellent.

js2 1 hour ago | | |

AFAIK, SMB doesn't support symbolic links.

deepspace 26 minutes ago |

The dot-com era called. They want ClearCase back.

pvtmert 2 days ago |

Given the advent of LLMs and agentic coding, I believe this article needs re-visiting as it makes it much more discoverable to compare individual files across commits.

ramses0 48 minutes ago |

This is my favorite cursed finding: https://github.com/zevweiss/booze

FUSE-bindings for "filesystems in bash", eg:

https://github.com/zevweiss/booze/blob/master/cowsayfs.sh#L5...

    cs_read()
    {
      if ! [[ "$1" =~ ^/($cowpat)/[^/]+$ ]]; then
        booze_err=-$EINVAL
        return 1
      elif [ "$3" != 0 ]; then
        return 0
      fi

      local msg="${1#/*/}"
      local cow="${1#/}"
      cow="${cow%%/*}"
      cowsay -f "$cow" "$msg"
    }

...I think that WebDAV is "the way" compared to FUSE, but I'm always intrigued by the idea of virtual filesystems as an implementation face.

ulrischa 1 hour ago |

Nice idea. But when taking commits as folders one should delete, add and remame files in the folder and that is not possible in a commit because it creates another commit. So I think this is nit the right mental model

wtallis 1 hour ago | |

Files and folders can be read-only, a concept that has been around for about as long as the folders abstraction itself.

everybodyknows 22 minutes ago |

2023.

steveBK123 1 hour ago |

NFS.. stop right there

mmh0000 40 minutes ago | |

You're being downvoted, but, seriously... NFS is a joke for anything outside of an enterprise setup with a bunch of ancillary support services in place.

The fact that NFSv4 has no concept of true "Authentication" and just blindly accepts whatever the client sends is the craziest network application design ever:

  Client: Hi, NFS server, I'm Bob! UID=1000
  Server: Hi Bob! Here's access to all of Bob's files! I trust you and don't need a password or anything!
  Client: Thanks!!!

Some of you may nitpick and say, "well ackkkuallyy, NFS supports authentication through GSSAPI/krb."

And to you, I say, that's crazy! Setting up Kerberos just to authenticate users for access to my Linux ISOs is a crazy large requirement! Sure, it might make sense for an enterprise that already uses Kerberos + LDAP + NFS + certificate management, but for everyone else, that's a lot of infrastructure to set up and maintain for what should be BASIC functionality.

EDIT

ALSO!!! Why the fork does NFS run as a kernel module (nfsd)!? Shouldn't that be an external daemon!? Who the heck thought any of this was a good idea!?

  <sarcasm mode> 
    Dev1: Here's a great idea! Let's run an insecure network server in Kernel space! 
    Dev2: OMG! You're so smart! Let's also exclude any encryption!!!
 </>

//end rant of an old, bitter Linux sysadmin

projektfu 8 minutes ago | | |

Will this matter if it's running on localhost and only accessible to the users there? She's just using it as a stand-in for FUSE.

chungy 30 minutes ago | | |

Funny part is, that NFSv4 supports SIDs for user authentication, but the Linux implementation leaves it out (among all the other ACL features) simply on the basis that Linux doesn't support them at all.

The FreeBSD, Solaris, Mac OS X, and Windows (yes, even Windows) implementations of NFSv4 are fully featured with this stuff.

nine_k 37 minutes ago | | |

Does this mean that I can connect to an NFS server saying my UID=0 and get local root?

skydhash 15 minutes ago | | |

> The fact that NFSv4 has no concept of true "Authentication" and just blindly accepts whatever the client sends is the craziest network application design ever

Doesn’t the secure option require ports only a root user can bind too? And you can always create secure tunnels if the physical network is insecure.

cyberax 57 minutes ago |

BTW, if you want a simple NFSv4 client in Go, feel free to use mine: https://github.com/Cyberax/go-nfs-client

Making it into an NFSv4 server should also be pretty easy.

cs_read() { if ! [[ "$1" =~ ^/($cowpat)/[^/]+$ ]]; then booze_err=-$EINVAL return 1 elif [ "$3" != 0 ]; then return 0 fi local msg="${1#/*/}" local cow="${1#/}" cow="${cow%%/*}" cowsay -f "$cow" "$msg" }