Title: Discussion 7 — Why Ignore It, Why Branch It?
Course: AIINFRA 100: AI Systems & Development Environments > Section: Week 07 — Version Control with Git

💬 Discussion 7 — Why Ignore It, Why Branch It? (20 pts)

Think about the .gitignore file and the branch you created in Lab 7. Post a response addressing:

- Pick one category of file you excluded (data, model weights, notebook checkpoints, environments, or secrets) and explain in your own words why committing that type of file to Git history would cause a real problem for a team working on an AI/ML project.
- Why is it useful that a branch is just a lightweight pointer rather than a full copy of your project? Describe one experiment or change you'd want to isolate on its own branch instead of doing directly on main.
- Have you ever lost work, or seen someone lose work, because something wasn't backed up or version-controlled (in any context, not just code)? How does this week change how you think about the difference between "committing" and "backing up"?

Then respond to at least two classmates — do you agree with the problem they described, or can you think of a scenario where their ignored file category might actually need to be tracked (perhaps with Git LFS)?