Lix – universal version control system for binary files • Hacker News Board

Lix – universal version control system for binary files

#1

Post by onecommit » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 11:55 PM UTC

Lix – universal version control system for binary files
lix.dev

Re: Lix – universal version control system for binary files

#2

Post by solidsnack9000 » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 2:06 AM UTC

It was initially hard for me to understand how this could work but it looks like there is a plugin system?

Re: Lix – universal version control system for binary files

#3

Post by gu5 » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 2:32 AM UTC

Lix is also a soft fork of the official Nix package manager implementation: https://lix.systems/

Re: Lix – universal version control system for binary files

#4

Post by bibimsz » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 4:30 AM UTC

compelling problem statement. md and csv have their limit.

Re: Lix – universal version control system for binary files

#5

Post by AmbroseBierce » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 5:14 AM UTC

Git is a command line program so it feels strange that this doesn't seem to support that use case.

Re: Lix – universal version control system for binary files

#6

Post by hekkle » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 5:35 AM UTC

AmbroseBierce wrote: post #5

Git is a command line program so it feels strange that this doesn't seem to support that use case.

Based on the product description, it seems that they don't like text, and want to deal in objects. It would feel strange if they did support a terminal, rather than a GUI.

Re: Lix – universal version control system for binary files

#7

Post by yoyohello13 » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 5:46 AM UTC

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.

Re: Lix – universal version control system for binary files

#8

Post by forrestthewoods » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 5:49 AM UTC

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.

Re: Lix – universal version control system for binary files

#9

Post by uasi » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 5:52 AM UTC

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...

Re: Lix – universal version control system for binary files

#10

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 6:11 AM UTC

gu5 wrote: post #3

Lix is also a soft fork of the official Nix package manager implementation: https://lix.systems/

I really assumed that this was that; even calling it a universal version control system for binary files would be kind of a weird way of describing it but is plausibly a valid description for the package manager.