Nice idea. But when taking commits as folders one should delete, add and remame files in the folder and that is not possible in a commit because it creates another commit.
So I think this is nit the right mental model
> None of these are the most efficient way to do this (you can use git show and git log -S or maybe git grep to accomplish something similar), but personally I always forget the syntax and navigating a filesystem feels easier to me.
i feel like some of the old-school commands will benefit from long args, e.g., '--search'. at the time of writing, the current `git log` documentation[1]'s `-S' has _one_ instance of the word 'search'.
(un)related to the article, author went on to contribute documentation updates to git, which were much needed [2]
The two filesystems I could that were natively supported by Mac OS were WebDav and NFS. I couldn’t tell which would be easier to implement so I just tried both”
Given the advent of LLMs and agentic coding, I believe this article needs re-visiting as it makes it much more discoverable to compare individual files across commits.
Nice idea. But when taking commits as folders one should delete, add and remame files in the folder and that is not possible in a commit because it creates another commit. So I think this is nit the right mental model
> None of these are the most efficient way to do this (you can use git show and git log -S or maybe git grep to accomplish something similar), but personally I always forget the syntax and navigating a filesystem feels easier to me.
i feel like some of the old-school commands will benefit from long args, e.g., '--search'. at the time of writing, the current `git log` documentation[1]'s `-S' has _one_ instance of the word 'search'.
(un)related to the article, author went on to contribute documentation updates to git, which were much needed [2]
[1]: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-log#Documentation/git-log.txt--... [2]: https://jvns.ca/blog/2026/01/08/a-data-model-for-git/
[delayed]
FTA: “problem 1: webdav or NFS?
The two filesystems I could that were natively supported by Mac OS were WebDav and NFS. I couldn’t tell which would be easier to implement so I just tried both”
I might find out that it is incomplete, buggy or a nuisance to use, but FSKit (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/FSKit) would be my first choice.
macOS actually has an excellent SMB client, so the options actually are: WebDAV, NFS (3.0 and 4.0), SMB, FSKit.
By excellent do you mean bearable? macOS’s SMB stack is certainly not excellent.
Related: Fossil has a `fusefs` subcommand: https://fossil-scm.org/home/help/fusefs
The DIRECTORY/checkins/ directory doesn't list out anything by itself, but you can look things up by any of the supported checkin names (hash, tag, branch, date...): https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/checkin_names.wiki
Given the advent of LLMs and agentic coding, I believe this article needs re-visiting as it makes it much more discoverable to compare individual files across commits.
NFS.. stop right there