[lug] Version Control Device Special Files?

[stimits at comcast.net]

Hi,

This is probably not practical, but I have need to deal with version control of several small embedded file systems, and would like to put them under subversion.

The ability to track the file system from two different vendors plus my own modifications, where large parts of these file systems are in common, are required. Those needs combined with subversion branching and merging would give me a very good way of comparing changes and exporting merges and edits, both from the different vendors and myself. I don't care about inefficiencies of copying entire linux file systems, nor do I care if binary file versioning is inefficient.

The trouble is that svn cannot store or version device special files. Named pipes, character or block device special files, sockets, or anything "special" breaks svn. Other than obtaining a copy of someone else's git repo, I'm not really skilled with git (e.g., I've not set up a git server), and not sure what it does if I want to maintain separate vendor branches while sometimes merging parts of those branches. If subversion handled device special files I'd have everything I need...but what would be my other options? Does git deal well with device special files? What other version control methods would be useful?
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