Git-annex


git-annex is a distributed file synchronization system written in Haskell. It aims to solve the problem of sharing and synchronizing collections of large files independent from a commercial service or even a central server.

History

The development of git-annex began in 2010. In 2012-13 the development was funded through a Kickstarter campaign. The main development of this campaign was the git-annex assistant, a component that runs in the background to automate the synchronization of repositories.
The next crowd funding campaign for 2013-14 was organized over a self hosted platform.

Design

git-annex uses git to index files but does not store them in the git history. Instead a symbolic link representing and linking to the probably large file is committed. git-annex manages a content-addressable storage for the files under its control. A separate git branch logs the location of every file. Thus users can clone a git-annex repository and then decide for every file whether to make it locally available.

Availability

git-annex is notably part of the following distributions: