Git-annex

git-annex is a distributed file synchronization system written in Haskell. It aims to share and synchronize collections of large files independent from a commercial service and a central server.

The development of git-annex began in 2010.² In 2012-13 the development was funded through a Kickstarter campaign.³ The main development of this campaign was the git-annex assistant, a component that runs in the background to automate the synchronization of repositories.

A following crowd funding campaign for 2013-14 was organized over a self-hosted platform.⁴

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 possibly 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.

git-annex packages are available for a variety of operating systems, including:⁵

• Debian⁶
• Ubuntu⁷
• Fedora⁸
• FreeBSD⁹
• Arch Linux¹⁰
• NixOS¹¹
• Guix¹²
• Gentoo¹³
• OpenBSD¹⁴
• Android¹⁵
• macOS (via Homebrew)¹⁶
• Windows¹⁷