Building a minimal clone of Git as an undergrad final year project

Question

Hi,
I was reading the book Git Internals and was awestruck by its simplicity. So I thought may be I could try to make a simplistic version of Git (something that can be done withing 4-5 months time period). I understand that Git is a huge project and done by the best of the software engineers.

My question is what are the possible challenges in undertaking such a project ? Something that only supports only few features lets say creating a repository, branching, committing, check out.

My main motive behind such a project is that I have interest in data structures, programming in Linux and I particularly like C. So while rest of my class mates are happy making web applications I want to do something like this. If you have some other suggestions of projects that match my interests then you are more than welcome to mention them :-)

Thanks.

Answer 1

Although imitation is sincerest form of flattery, the world does not need another Git. I certainly don't mean to discourage you from pursuing something related, though. Could you get credit for adding features or using the Git back-end for a different purpose?

A few things I've thought of doing with Git but haven't had the time are:

• Add tracking of special files.
• Add tracking of directory permissions.
• Use the Git back-end as an immutable data store for something other than version tracking (perhaps for storage of sensitive data or something).

I hope you find something cool to work on!