See also

We've been talking about storing large files in a Git repository. if you have a Git repository that is too big due to the architecture of the product you will find that normal Git operations, such as clone and commit, take too long. Microsoft has innovated the virtualization of Git repositories to address an internal problem found in adopting Git for the Windows product development team that has Git repositories which are over hundreds of GB in size. Microsoft has contributed this innovation to the open source under the GVFS project. Git Virtual File System (GVFS) is the open source system that enables Git to operate at enterprise-scale. It makes using and managing massive Git repositories possible. GVFS virtualizes the filesystem beneath your Git repository so that Git tools see what appears to be a normal repository when, in fact, the files are not actually present on disk. GVFS only downloads files as they are needed. GVFS also manages Git's internal state so that it only considers the files you have accessed, instead of having to examine every file in the repository. This ensures that operations, such as status and checkout, are as fast as possible. Learn more about GVFS here: https://gvfs.io/.