scalar VS Ext4Fsd

It's not only Windows that uses Git at Microsoft, but Sharepoint and Office (which includes the on-prem version of SharePoint). In terms of repo size Windows and Office are similar. I was part of the team that migrated Sharepoint from a Perforce clone to Git and helped build the tooling to allow Office to move as well. VFS for Git [1] and Scalar [2] are really good pieces of software.

[1] - https://github.com/microsoft/VFSForGit

[2] - https://github.com/microsoft/scalar

Congratulations! That means you basically figured out how the clone procedure works and found a way to do so just in a partial way (also in an unsafe way). But it is a cool idea, nonetheless.

Also check out the Scalar [1] project and its predecessor, GVFS [2], both from Microsoft to manage their monorepo via a VFS layer.

[1]: https://github.com/microsoft/scalar

[2]: https://github.com/microsoft/VFSForGit

You mean like VFSforGit? Or the successor for that called Scalar? This has been a solved problem. Microsoft moved their entire Windows codebase to git. There have been a ton of huge improvements to performance as a result of that. And the above two plugins are easily better ways to deal with what you're referring to without resulting to dead tech.

I was just looking at Microsoft's git VFS (https://github.com/microsoft/VFSForGit), which is deprecated and now points to Scalar (https://github.com/microsoft/scalar), which is also deprecated? What's Microsoft's story with git now? Is there still a virtual file system involved?

Microsoft has/had a mono-repo based on the Git Virtual Filesystem, but future efforts have apparently moved towards the use of Scalar: https://github.com/microsoft/scalar

This has been superceded by Scalar (https://github.com/microsoft/scalar) and again merged into Microsoft's fork of git (https://github.com/microsoft/git)

It supports neat stuff like partial clone which seems like a pretty big deal.

As mentioned in the blog "we are moving towards providing a known version of git", probably Microsoft Git which includes the scalar command but also upstreams many of the optimizations to git core https://github.com/microsoft/scalar#why-did-scalar-move

disclaimer: canva staff working on source control

Whilst that's true out-of-the-box, there are several third-party drivers and apps to read Linux filesysrems in Windows, like WinBtrfs, Ext4Fsd, Paragon File Systems Link etc.

I found this for ext2,3,4 too, I have tested personally https://github.com/bobranten/Ext4Fsd

There's the once-well-known ext2fsd, but it has become abandonware for ~5 years, and it causes lots of trouble on newer Windows versions. Bo Branten took a fork of it and fixed some of its bugs two years ago, but he has yet to add any missing features like journaling or ACL.

by default only the filesystem isn't recognized, the partitions will still show up as a drive letter (except for partitions that are hidden by id or that windows can't recognize), though when you try to access them windows will of course ask you to format. if you install an unofficial kernel driver like winbtrfs or ext4fsd then the partition & filesystem can be fully recognized

In a pinch, you could use Ext4Fsd for windows at https://github.com/bobranten/Ext4Fsd

Maybe this? https://github.com/bobranten/Ext4Fsd

There actually is a way to run btrfs and ext4 on Windows, but I probably wouldn't recommend them as they likely won't have the same speed and stability as a natively supported file system format.

There is Ext4Fsd, but it's not very good.