forum/metadata limitsgit-annexhttp://git-annex.branchable.com/forum/metadata_limits/git-annexikiwiki2014-12-02T22:37:33Zcomment 1http://git-annex.branchable.com/forum/metadata_limits/comment_1_a20bbe49f2f23d23131221ec79c8b973/joey2014-12-02T18:51:11Z2014-12-02T18:39:34Z
<p>There's no particular size limit for metadata. But things may not scale
well past some size.</p>
<p>Having a big metadata value could make git-annex be a little slow when
dealing with metadata, since it has to parse the metadata log file.
So if you stored say, 1 mb in metadata, that's one mb of disk IO and data
processing every time git-annex looks at the metadata for that file.</p>
<p>All the metadata for a file will also be buffered in memory when git-annex
is looking at that file's metadata. So <code>git-annex view</code> would use 1 mb or
so more memory in the above example. (But git-annex only looks at one
file's metadata at a time, so its memory use won't grow if you have a lot
of files with metadata.)</p>
<p>Also of course, the metadata is stored in git, and so it will make your git
repository bigger.</p>
<p>I would not expect any reasonable description of a photo to be large enough
for its size to be a problem.</p>
<p>I'd even feel ok with putting the full text of a license in as metadata
(GPL is 30kb, and git would deduplicate redundant license metadata).</p>
comment 2http://git-annex.branchable.com/forum/metadata_limits/comment_2_4e8995ccd5fc2e5ee5d89a0780e5df9d/James2014-12-02T22:37:33Z2014-12-02T22:37:33Z
<p>Thanks Joey.</p>
<p>Now to sort out how to create the data <img src="http://git-annex.branchable.com/smileys/smile4.png" alt=";)" /> -- <a href="http://git-annex.branchable.com/users/james/">james</a></p>