linux - How to reuse/extend etckeeper's metadata engine for git control of non-/etc filesystems, or extend git natively with said capability?

I want etckeeper-like filesystem metadata control for non-/etc, git-controlled directories. Home and web-app directories, among others, are classically sensitive to metadata (file ownership, ACL, permissions). This can be extremely useful/important to employ git for automated server deployment (along with tools like Fabric), among other things. I would like to re-use etckeeper-like capability on said dirs, either with etckeeper itself or something else.

Can anyone suggest any tips/tricks/working solutions to provide either or both of the following:

1. apply the etckeeper engine (only care about the git-specific capability of etckeeper) to non-/etc, git-controlled directories. (Can assume at least Debian/Ubuntu Linux; would like MacOSX/homebrew support if possible.)


2. extend git with metadata support (beyond over-simplified things like git-cache-meta) to support an etckeeper-like capability or better?

There's a growing interest in extending git with filesystem-metadata-control capabilities. etckeeper's metadata "engine" seems quite powerful and reliable in my experience, and etckeeper seems popular with others as well. metastore less so at least in part due to metastore's non-text-based/merge-unfriendly challenges. Further, etckeeper appears to have started with a metastore-based core, but then switched to its own (speculative?).

Obviously, this has OS/filesystem-specific dependencies. (eg, not trying to auto-deploy on Windows.) Suggest an optional extension (if it's a "native extension") of git, enabled on-demand by the user with understood consequences of cross-platform breakage, such that native behavior doesn't break git's "by default" cross-platform friendliness. Further, don't need to save extravagant unix/darwin/etc metadata (like ACLs); basic user/group/other perms and user/group ownership would be fine. (These are the only things that are currently breaking things in my "security/vulnerability control/policies.") Specific OSes I'm targeting up front: Debian, Ubuntu, MacOS 10.6+. Later: Redhat's (CentOS, Fedora, RHEL), SUSE, maybe other Linuxes, and *BSD (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD). Don't see a need/application for Windows/VMS (even though VMS can be posix-friendly) or other non-unix-like OSes at any foreseeable point.

See also: background on pre-existing git, file-metadata/file-type tracking capabilities at this stackoverflow question I posted.

Additionally: if anyone cares to develop requirements for such capability, I am sure that could prove useful, particularly for a new/uncompleted project to address above.