git-artifact

Why

Overall

• no new tools involved ( artifact management system )
• Same credentials scheme as your source code ( even ssh )
• easy to trigger in pipelines based on tags or branch updates
• no need for release drives/shares which lack features for tracing and maintenance
• Git's normal garbage collection takes care of the details for cleaning

Producer

• Add the git-artifact repo as submodule. Let the make system output to the git-artifact repo directory ready to commit
• easy to append artifacts as stages evolves with more artifacts
• no need to zip before upload nor unzip after download
• easy to add information, environment, tools and git source sha1 in the artifact for traceability and later reproduction

Consumer

• easy to use a submodule for other repo as a dependency
• even a consumer can be a producer adding further artifacts on top the consumed commit with a new commit and tag
• git understand the content in workspace and git clean does not remove artifacts in contrast to zip'ed artifacts

The concept

Prerequisites

We are using the full freedom and powers of Git, so it is required to have delete/force push permissions to branches in order move branch heads to new artifacts that is not fast forwards.

Advises

Define a tag- and branch-name strategy for each "layer" of git-artifacts. This simplifies appending to old artifacts and allows keeping several artifacts in the same repository. With only one artifact, the scheme could be unsigned/latest and signed/latest for branches. Tags could use 1.1.8928/unsigned, 1.1.8928/signed, 1.1.8928/targettest-passed, 1.1.8928/targettest-failed, 1.1.8928/regression-passed etc. Adding an artifact name would allow more than one artifact in the repository.

Initialize

git init
touch .gitignore && git add .gitignore
touch .gitattributes && git add .gitattributes
git commit -m "Initialize the git artifact repository"
git remote add origin <artifact-url>
git push origin master/main

Adding a new artifact to the artifact-repo

git clone -b master -depth 1 <artifact-url>
:git add $file: || git add .
git commit -m "$message"
git tag -a -m "$message" $tag
git push origin $tag:refs/tags/$tag
git push origin latest --force

Consume the latest git-artifact

git clone -b latest -depth 1 <repo-url>

Appending to latest artifact

git clone -b latest -depth 1 <repo-url>
:repeat: git add $file || git add .
git commit -m "$append_message"
git tag -a -m "$append_message" $append_tag
git push origin $append_tag:refs/tags/$append_tag
git push origin latest_append --force

Searching

git ls-remote

git ls-remote origin --tags | grep <pattern>

git log

git log --grep <pattern>

Pruning / cleaning artifacts

using git log and get tags with a certain pattern

Advanced

Cloning with filter

• only some repo managers can do this

LFS

Dual artifactory and git-artifact usages

• set your LFS store to be Artifactory and then can normal artifacts via upload and LFS have traceability