If you move into a secluded cabin, you cannot expect a broadband Internet connection. When US Debian developer Joey Hess moved to such a place in 2010, he had to find a way to reconcile his work with his new habitat. He only launched his expensive dial-up connection once a week for cost reasons, but he had a whole bunch of servers with a stack of hard drives to synchronize.

Crowdfunding Success

Because of his situation, Hess began to write a synchronization tool for his own purposes that is now used as the underpinnings for the free Git version control software. This tool is now widely available under the GPL as git-annex [1]. Additionally, thanks to a crowdfunding campaign, Hess has also developed the git-annex assistant web GUI, which makes the software more accessible for end users. See the "Installation" box for more information.

On the git-annex homepage, Hess describes two target groups for the software: Bob the archivist and Alice the globetrotter. The archivist can use git-annex to manage myriad files in a single directory tree, even though the files are spread across multiple servers and even across removable hard drives. For safety reasons, git-annex can also create multiple copies of each file.

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