- Lix is also a soft fork of the official Nix package manager implementation: https://lix.systems/
- Git can display diff between binary files using custom diff drivers:
> Put the following line in your .gitattributes file: *.docx diff=word
> This tells Git that any file that matches this pattern (.docx) should use the “word” filter when you try to view a diff that contains changes. What is the “word” filter? You have to set it up [in .gitconfig].
https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Customizing-Git-Git-Attribute...
by samuelstros
1 subcomments
- Holy moly. I just went to bed. Checking my phone for last time. Opening hackernews for "one last scroll" and see lix, my project, popping up here.
Going through the questions now. So much for going to bed.
- Hi, before you get too wedded to the name, you should be aware that there's already a major nix project called lix: https://lix.systems/.
Before clicking, I assumed this was actually a new feature of theirs that would apply nix build principles of some sort to version control of binaries.
- I wonder how much room this leaves for unintended, not shown changes. E.g. Excel is a complex format that allows all sort of metadata and embeddings that would not always seem as cell changes ...
by mrgoldenbrown
1 subcomments
- Home page states Lix can diff. "any file format like .xlsx, .pdf, .docx"
Wow, sounds useful. Git doesn't do that out of the box.
BUT... the list of available "plugins" only has .csv,.md and json, which are things that git already handles just fine?
Can it actually diff excel and word and PDF or not?
by thephotonsphere
1 subcomments
- name confusing it be
https://lix.systems/
by forrestthewoods
3 subcomments
- Weird sales pitch. I think Git is super mediocre and a VCS that supports binary files would be awesome.
But then the first thing it talks about is diffing files. Which honestly shouldn’t even be a feature of VCS. That’s just a separate layer.
- It seems to me that this is just an issue of diff features. Git can extended to show semantic diff of binary files and it doesn't technically need a completely new VCS.
As git became the most popular VCS right now and it continues to do so for foreseeable future, I don't think incompatibility with git is a good design choice.
by notachatbot123
1 subcomments
- I look at the page and leave without any clue as to what it actually does. Agents and AI are mentioned so I assume it might just be incoherent slop?
The person behind this boasts on Twitter, that they fired all their remote developers and used AI instead.
Judging by tweets, this project is 2-3 years in the making.
> Lix is a universal version control system that can diff any file format (.xlsx, .pdf, .docx, etc).
> Unlike Git's line-based diffs, Lix understands file structure. Lix sees price: 10 → 12 or cell B4: pending → shipped, not "line 4 changed" or "binary files differ".
How? I have a custom binary file format, how would Lix be able to interpret this?
> Lix adds a version control system on top of SQL databases that let's you query virtual tables like file, file_history, etc. via plain SQL. These table's are version controlled.
What does SQL have to do with everything?
- Great semantic diffs, but does Lix actually define a merge algebra for concurrent structured edits, or are conflicts just punted back to humans? How does its SQL engine guarantee deterministic merges vs last-write-wins?
- Same name as my Phoenix inspired framework for go: https://codeberg.org/lixgo/lix
by yoyohello13
1 subcomments
- Looks cool, but seems kind of weird that it only works through an sdk. Should there be a cli or something?
Edit: Oh I see. Seems like their use case is embedding version control into another application.
by internet_points
0 subcomment
- They should change the name while they still can https://lix.systems/
by orthoxerox
0 subcomment
- It's nice, but it needs to support the most common file formats used in gamedev to gain enough traction.
by AmbroseBierce
3 subcomments
- Git is a command line program so it feels strange that this doesn't seem to support that use case.
by solidsnack9000
1 subcomments
- It was initially hard for me to understand how this could work but it looks like there is a plugin system?
- I wonder if this could be used in conjunction with git for UT5 projects
by anttiharju
1 subcomments
- for office files one can also unzip and zip to store them in git as plaintext
by dev_l1x_be
0 subcomment
- Great name! :)
- compelling problem statement. md and csv have their limit.
by huflungdung
0 subcomment
- [dead]
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