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?
Lix – universal version control system for binary files
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Re: Lix – universal version control system for binary files
#32Re: Lix – universal version control system for binary files
#33I wonder if this could be used in conjunction with git for UT5 projects
Re: Lix – universal version control system for binary files
#34It 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.
Re: Lix – universal version control system for binary files
#35I 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?
Re: Lix – universal version control system for binary files
#36Git is a command line program so it feels strange that this doesn't seem to support that use case.
Hi, I'm the creator of lix. Lix doesn't target code version control. It can be used for it. But the primary use case is embedding version control in applications. Such an application can be an AI agent that modifies files which entails the need to show what the agent did in that file e.g. tracking the changes. Git is good enough for code. I don't think there is space to gain much market share.
Some feedback about the primary use case.
Your Lix doc (LLM written but with typos?) is sort of weird, handwaving how Lix does version control over, say, Excel, to say it's about working with SQL databases:
How does Lix work?
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.
Then it gets weirder:
Why this matters:
Lix doesn't reinvent databases — durability, ACID, and corruption recovery are handled by battle-tested SQL databases.
This seems like a left turn from the value prop and why the value prop matters?
A firm-wide audit trail of changes to typically opaque file types (M365 files in particular) could be tremendously valuable -- and additive -- compared to the versioning that's baked into the file bundles. The version control is already embedded by the app, what adds value is reporting on or managing that from outside the app.
As for how it works, both in the docs and in the comment I'm replying to, it's unclear how any of this interacts with the native version control embedded in M365 apps or why this tool can be trusted as effective at tracking M365 content changes.
Re: Lix – universal version control system for binary files
#37name confusing it be https://lix.systems/
Name collision. I thought it might be the "Lix" fork of "Nix".
Re: Lix – universal version control system for binary files
#38Weird 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.
Through the gitattributes and gitconfig files, git can be extended to work with any external tool for specific file types. For example: https://github.com/ewanmellor/git-diff-image
Re: Lix – universal version control system for binary files
#39Great name! :)
Re: Lix – universal version control system for binary files
#40It 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.
Indeed, if lix were to target code version controlling, incompatibility with git is a “dead on arrival” situation.
But, Lix use case is not version controlling code.
It’s embedding version control in applications. Hence, the reason why lix runs within SQL databases. Apps have databases. Lix runs of top of them.
The benefit for the developer is a version control system within their database, and exposing version control to users.