Archive 29. May 2012

apenwarr/bup. A very interesting small tool that manages backups differentially - and that is based on the git data structures. In principle, one could consider it as an intelligent splitter for large files with minor changes in each version - for example, tar files from servers. For this purpose, an rsync-like algorithm is used to determine the differences and the result is stored in a git archive. The whole thing can also be combined with the previous git-annex and thus provide a space-saving backup solution.

git-annex. Interesting plugin for git with which you only manage the metadata of large files, but not their actual contents in git. The files themselves are managed as normal external files, but the directory structures and references are correctly versioned - and all this together with normally versioned files. This bypasses the problem that git has with large files. And thus something like a photo archive based on git becomes possible.