brig - decentralized & secure synchronization

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What is brig?

brig is a distributed & secure file synchronization tool with version control. It is based on IPFS, written in Go and will feel familiar to git users. Think of it as a swiss army knife for file synchronization or as a peer to peer alternative to Dropbox.

Key feature highlights:

  • Encryption of data during storage and transport, plus optional compression on the fly.
  • Simplified git version control only limited by your storage space.
  • Synchronization algorithm that can handle moved files and empty directories and files.
  • Your data does not need to be stored on the device you are currently using.
  • FUSE filesystem that feels like a normal sync folder.
  • No central server at all. Still, central architectures can be build with brig.
  • Gateway and Web based UI to share normal HTTP/S links with other users.
  • Auto-updating facility that will sync on any change.
  • Completely free software under the terms of the AGPL.
  • …

Please refer to the Features for more details. If you want a visual hint how brig looks on the commandline, refer to the Quickstart.

What is brig not?

brig tries to focus on being up conceptually simple, by hiding a lot of complicated details regarding storage and security. Therefore the end result is hopefully easy and pleasant to use, while being secure by default. Since brig is a »general purpose« tool for file synchronization it of course cannot excel in all areas. It won’t replace high performance network file systems and should not be used when you are in need of high throughput - at least not at the moment.

I have questions!

Please ask in one of those places:

Current Status

This software is in active development and probably not suited for production use yet! But to get it in a stable state, it is essential that people play around with it. Consider this is as an open beta phase. Also don’t take anything granted for now, everything might change wildly before version 1.0.0.

With that being said, brig is near a somewhat usable state where you can play around with it quite well. All aforementioned features do work, besides possibly being a little harder to use than ideally possible. A lot of work is currently going into stabilizing the current feature set.

At this moment brig is only tested on Linux. Porting and testing efforts are welcome. Other platforms should be able to compile, but there are currently not guarantees that it will work.