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.

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.

The next 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 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.

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

• Debian^[6]
• Ubuntu^[7]
• Fedora^[8]
• FreeBSD^[9]
• Arch Linux^[10]
• NixOS^[11]
• Guix^[12]
• Gentoo^[13]
• OpenBSD^[14]
• Android^[15]
• macOS (via Homebrew)^[16]
• Windows^[17]

• Official website