git-annex allows managing large files with git, without storing the file contents in git. It can sync, backup, and archive your data, offline and online. Checksums and encryption keep your data safe and secure. Bring the power and distributed nature of git to bear on your large files with git-annex.

git-annex is designed for git users who love the command line. For everyone else, the git-annex assistant turns git-annex into an easy to use folder synchroniser.

To get a feel for git-annex, see the walkthrough.

key concepts

the details

other stuff

use case: The Archivist

Bob has many drives to archive his data, most of them kept offline, in a safe place.

With git-annex, Bob has a single directory tree that includes all his files, even if their content is being stored offline. He can reorganize his files using that tree, committing new versions to git, without worry about accidentally deleting anything.

When Bob needs access to some files, git-annex can tell him which drive(s) they're on, and easily make them available. Indeed, every drive knows what is on every other drive.
more about location tracking

Bob thinks long-term, and so he appreciates that git-annex uses a simple repository format. He knows his files will be accessible in the future even if the world has forgotten about git-annex and git.
more about future-proofing

Run in a cron job, git-annex adds new files to archival drives at night. It also helps Bob keep track of intentional and unintentional copies of files, and logs information he can use to decide when it's time to duplicate the content of old drives.
more about backup copies

use case: The Nomad

Alice is always on the move, often with her trusty netbook and a small handheld terabyte USB drive, or a smaller USB keydrive. She has a server out there on the net. She stores data, encrypted in the Cloud.

All these things can have different files on them, but Alice no longer has to deal with the tedious process of keeping them manually in sync, or remembering where she put a file. git-annex manages all these data sources as if they were git remotes.
more about special remotes

When she has 1 bar on her cell, Alice queues up interesting files on her server for later. At a coffee shop, she has git-annex download them to her USB drive. High in the sky or in a remote cabin, she catches up on podcasts, videos, and games, first letting git-annex copy them from her USB drive to the netbook (this saves battery power).
more about transferring data

When she's done, she tells git-annex which to keep and which to remove. They're all removed from her netbook to save space, and Alice knows that next time she syncs up to the net, her changes will be synced back to her server.
more about distributed version control

If that describes you, or if you're some from column A and some from column B, then git-annex may be the tool you've been looking for to expand from keeping all your small important files in git, to managing your large files with git.

Recent news

version 10.20240227
Posted Tue Feb 27 17:02:26 2024
version 10.20240129
Posted Mon Jan 29 18:12:23 2024

devblog

day 651 a major release and a conference
Posted Mon Jun 26 15:53:43 2023
day 649-650 speeding up repeated imports
Posted Thu Jun 1 22:43:33 2023
day 644-648 terminal escape sequences
Posted Wed Apr 12 19:03:10 2023
day 643 adjusted view branches
Posted Mon Feb 27 20:28:28 2023
day 642 cost model
Posted Mon Nov 8 20:21:08 2021

Recent videos

git-annex assistant lan
Posted Wed Jun 4 16:49:34 2014

Recent forum posts

New external special remote for rclone
Posted Mon Mar 4 17:36:21 2024
Possible to restore from an encrypted s3 remote?
Posted Mon Mar 4 17:03:28 2024
git-annex unused on directory special remote?
Posted Tue Feb 27 02:23:33 2024
rsync test remote fail
Posted Sun Feb 25 00:55:19 2024
copying annex between remotes manually?
Posted Tue Feb 20 20:51:02 2024

git-annex is Free Software, written in Haskell. You can contribute!

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