Why are git repos so much smaller than SVN repos?

Question

I have recently converted a huge SVN repository with 500k commits to several hundred git repos.

The git repos are tiny in comparison to SVN. My manager thinks I haven't done it properly! I used svn2git and I think it worked perfectly.

Just wondering what are the main reasons why it would be smaller?

Can you tell us how big the subversion repository was, and how big the git repository became? — Lasse V. Karlsen, Apr 01 '17 at 09:42
I don't have access to the svn server right now, but just looking at one particular repo. It was 650MB in SVN and only 130MB in git. — eeijlar, Apr 01 '17 at 21:29

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 01 '17 at 06:34

svnvsgit.com answers your question:

Subversion and Git repositories with equivalent data will have approximately the same size. Except for the case of storing a lot of binary files, when Subversion repositories could be significantly smaller than Git ones (because Subversion’s xdelta delta compression algorithm works both for binary and text files).

Under Repository Site Benchmarks he compares SVN and Git and sees that:

the difference of repository size is truly insignificant because the Git repository is only 10% smaller than the corresponding Subversion one

In conlussion:

Git has an overall smaller repository size
SVN will be smaller if you have a lot of binary files

If your Git repos compared size is significantly smaller (more than 20%) there is a real possibility that something went wrong.

Why are git repos so much smaller than SVN repos?

1 Answers1