Does git duplicate all my files?
backup-strategies, git
Solution
Space Used Equals GIT_DIR + GIT_WORK_TREE
If my website is 14GB will the .git directory occupy an additional 14 gb?
To oversimplify the case enormously, yes. In a non-bare respository, Git stores all tracked file blobs, as well as other repository objects such as trees and commits under GIT_DIR. It also maintains copies in the GIT_WORK_TREE.
The repository uses packfiles and deltification to keep this state of affairs from getting out of hand in the normal use case, but if you have 14GB+ of data in a non-bare respository--especially if a lot of those files are binary assets--then you may very well double-up (or worse) on disk usage.
Problem
I am trying to implement a new backup system on a website using git. The virtual private server has 20GB space total with 5GB free. When I run `git add .` at the `/var/www` (with my favorite `.gitignore` parameters) I have a gigantic git folder that fills my hard drive to capacity. It is not immediately apparent as to why this is happening as I expect the `.git` directory to contain the bits about the bits (meta information) and not binary duplicates of all my files! Whats going on here? If my website is 14GB will the `.git` directory occupy an additional 14 gb?