We used to store the screenshots in a seprate repo. But the screenshots are now stored within this repo using Git LFS

@jurgenhaas which guidelines are you referring to? We should definitely update the guide.

@sgiehl is there maybe a way to fetch / clone the repository and ignoring all images in git lfs? Maybe we could document this as well. May be useful eg here: http://piwik.org/faq/how-to-install/faq_18271/

See git-lfs/git-lfs#720
Haven't tried that, but might be an option

Here is an interesting performance comparison: git-lfs/git-lfs#931 (comment) I will give them a try and meanwhile reopen the issue

They all took about the same time for me and I think we could recommend any of them.

@jurgenhaas can you try if git clone --config filter.lfs.smudge=true https://github.com/piwik/piwik.git is faster for you? Or alternatively GIT_LFS_SKIP_SMUDGE=1 git clone https://github.com/piwik/piwik.git ?

@tsteur I've found the mention about screenshot storage at https://github.com/piwik/piwik/tree/3.x-dev/tests#screenshot-tests-build-artifacts

I will test the various clone options right now and will report back shortly.

@tsteur The filter config option is working well, it brings back the previous performance and the good thing is that this config is persistent because it is written to .git/config. All the screenshots are zero-length files and the only small downside is that the git status is dirty.

If someone uses this as a deployment strategy, the command should look like this:

git clone -b 2.17.0 --recurse-submodules --config filter.lfs.smudge=true https://github.com/piwik/piwik.git

@jurgenhaas the link you mentioned references actually generated screenshots during the test runs but not expected screenshots that are already in the repository.

Thank you for your test and feedback 👍 I have updated https://piwik.org/faq/how-to-install/faq_18271/