Software — free catalog
Large File Control (LFC)
A NASA software catalog entry available for reuse or request.
About this technology
Overview
Large File Control (LFC) is an extension to the popular revision control software Git that enables it to work better with large and binary (non-text) files. It works by allowing the user to declare certain files as "large," and then Git only lacks the metadata of that file while LFC handles the actual data in the large file. As a result, users are able to maintain the benefits of modern version control software, such as revision history, reproducibility, asynchronous collaboration, and ease of file transfer without having to download all historical versions of each binary file in the repository. This alleviates one of the major barriers to using Git for more applications outside of software development and especially helps to improve reproducibility in data science, computational aerosciences, or any other field with large data sets.