Overview + question
Want etckeeper-like filesystem metadata control for non-/etc, git-controlled directories. Home and web-app directories, among others, are classically sensitive to metadata (file ownership, ACL, permissions). Can be extremely useful/important to employ git for automated server deployment (along with tools like Fabric), among other things. Would like to re-use etckeeper-like capability on said dirs, either with etckeeper itself or something else.
Can anyone suggest any tips/tricks/working solutions to provide either or both of the following:
- apply the etckeeper engine (only care about the git-specific capability of etckeeper) to non-/etc, git-controlled directories. (Can assume at least Debian/Ubuntu Linux; would like MacOSX/homebrew support if possible.)
- extend git with metadata support (beyond over-simplified things like git-cache-meta) to support an etckeeper-like capability or better?
More details, background
There's a growing interest in extending git with filesystem-metadata-control capabilities. etckeeper's metadata "engine" seems quite powerful and reliable per my experience; etckeeper seems popular with others as well. metastore less so at least in part due to metastore's non-text-based/merge-unfriendly challenges. Further, etckeeper appears to have started with a metastore-based core, but then switched to its own (speculative?).
Obviously, this has OS/filesystem-specific dependencies. (eg, not trying to auto-deploy on Windows.) Suggest an optional extension (if it's a "native extension") of git, enabled on-demand by the user with understood consequences of cross-platform breakage, such that native behavior doesn't break git's "by default" cross-platform friendliness. Further, don't need to save extravagant unix/darwin/etc metadata (like ACLs); basic user/group/other perms and user/group ownership would be fine. (These are the only things that are currently breaking things in my "security/vulnerability control/policies.") Specific OSes I'm targeting up front: Debian, Ubuntu, MacOS 10.6+. Later: Redhat's (CentOS, Fedora, RHEL), SUSE, maybe other Linuxes, and *BSD (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD). Don't see a need/application for Windows/VMS (even though VMS can be posix-friendly) or other non-unix-like OSes at any foreseeable point.
See also: background on pre-existing git, file-metadata/file-type tracking capabilities at this stackoverflow question I posted.
Develop requirements for a new project?
Additionally: if anyone cares to develop requirements for such capability, am sure that could prove useful, particularly for a new/uncompleted project to address above.
