How should I set up a git repository with many static assets?

Question

I have a Rails project, with a lot of static assets, mostly images and flash (over 500MB). The whole repository is over 1GB when including git history.

The problem is, that as a Rails developer, I don't really need to have all of those assets in the same repository, since it makes git pretty slow. I can't just drop those assets from the repository, as there are other people working on the project who might need them.

I thought about using git submodules for the assets, but that might introduce a lot of complexity.

Is there anything I can do to make working with such a bloated project more smooth? What are some best practices for working with huge projects?

Answer 1

I would really recommend storing those large static binary data in a artifact repository, like for instance Nexus.
Such a repo isn't just for Java project, or isn't just for "release" or "snapshot" releases, but also for storing any kind of binary in away which makes its administration and identification easy.

Answer 2

Try git-annex. A more detailed answer can be found here:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/6635160/1524733