dvc VS dud

Collaboration and version control are crucial in AI/ML development projects due to the iterative nature of model development and the need for reproducibility. GitHub is the leading platform for source code management, allowing teams to collaborate on code, track issues, and manage project milestones. DVC (Data Version Control) complements Git by handling large data files, data sets, and machine learning models that Git can't manage effectively, enabling version control for the data and model files used in AI projects.

What you’re describing sounds like DVC (at a higher-ish—80%-solution level).

https://dvc.org/

See pachyderm too.

10. DVC by Iterative | Github | tutorial

Platforms such as MLflow monitor the development stages of machine learning models. In parallel, Data Version Control (DVC) brings version control system-like functions to the realm of data sets and models.

I was using DVC (https://dvc.org/) for some time to help solve this but it was getting hard to manage the storage connections and I would run into cache issues a lot, but this solves it using git-lfs itself.

DVC (Data Version Control):

I have been using DVC and MLflow since then DVC had only data tracking and MLflow only model tracking. I can say both are awesome now and maybe the only factor I would like to mention is that IMO, MLflow is a bit harder to learn while DVC is just a git practically.

I've used DVC in the past and generally liked its approach. That said, I wholeheartedly agree that it's clunky. It does a lot of things implicitly, which can make it hard to reason about. It was also extremely slow for medium-sized dataset (low 10s of GBs).

In response, I created a command-line tool that addresses these issues[0]. To reduce the comparison to an analogy: Dud : DVC :: Flask : Django.

[0]: https://github.com/kevin-hanselman/dud

There is also https://github.com/kevin-hanselman/dud

I very much agree with you about DVC's feature creep. The other issue I have with it is speed. DVC has left me scratching my head at its sluggishness many times. Because of these factors, I've been working on an alternative that focuses on simplicity and speed[0]. My tool is often five to ten times faster than DVC[1]. I'd love to hear what you think.

[0]: https://github.com/kevin-hanselman/dud

[1]: https://kevin-hanselman.github.io/dud/benchmarks/

I don't know about replacing Make with Docker, but I use the two together to good effect. One of my favorite hacks is adding a 'docker-%' rule in my Makefile to run make commands in a Docker image[1]. It's a bit mind-bending, and there's a few gotchas, but it works surprisingly well for simple rules.

[1]: https://github.com/kevin-hanselman/dud/blob/e98de8fcdf7ad564...

Thanks for sharing your experience. It's non-trivial and surprising behavior like this that drove me to build a custom system[0] myself. When I started researching version control tools for large files, I remember feeling like git-annex and Git LFS were awkwardly bolted onto Git; Git simply wasn't designed for large files. Then I found DVC[1], and its approach rang true for me. However, after using DVC for a year or so, I grew tired of DVC's many puzzling behaviors (most of which are outlined in the README at [0]). In the end, I built the tool I wanted for the job -- one that is exceptionally simple and fast.

[0]: https://github.com/kevin-hanselman/dud