We Put Half a Million files in One git Repository, Here's What We Learned - Canva Engineering Blog

versioning and version dependencies are more manageable.

idk why aren't they using git clone --filter to clone a part of the repo and/or git sparse-checkout or at least git status . while in the subdir you are doing your work. what's the point of doing git status on the whole thing if you're working in a dir?

They’re holding it wrong.

That's a naive take. These are no random autogenerated files. These are translation files. Even in the smoothest-running build systems and CICD pipelines, these can and often go wrong, because there is still an important human factor in generating translations. A regression hitting localization data means your whole system can become unusable for a whole portion of your userbase without having a good way to detect, track, and even monitor your apps.

Checking these files into the build system is the only reliable way to track changes in translation and accessibility data, and pinpoint regressions.

Source: I've worked for a company who had an internal translation service which by design required no human interaction and should only be integrated as a post-build step, and that system failed often and catastrophically. The only surefire way of tracking the mess it made was to commit those files and trwck changes per commit as part of pull requests.