[[!meta title="what git-annex is not"]]

* git-annex is not a backup system. It may be a useful component of an
  [[archival|use_case/bob]] system, or a way to deliver files to a backup
  system.

  For a backup system that uses git, take a look at
  [bup](http://github.com/apenwarr/bup).

* git-annex is not unison, but if you're finding unison's checksumming
  too slow, or its strict mirroring of everything to both places too
  limiting, then git-annex could be a useful alternative.

* git-annex is more than just a workaround for git limitations that might
  eventually be fixed by efforts like
  [git-bigfiles](http://caca.zoy.org/wiki/git-bigfiles).

* git-annex is not some flaky script that was quickly thrown together.
  I wrote it in Haskell because I wanted it to be solid and to compile
  down to a binary. And it has a fairly extensive test suite. (Don't be
  fooled by "make test" only showing a few dozen test cases; each test
  involves checking dozens to hundreds of assertions.)

* git-annex is not [git-media](https://github.com/schacon/git-media),
  although they both approach the same problem from a similar direction.
  I only learned of git-media after writing git-annex, but I probably
  would have still written git-annex instead of using it. Currently,
  git-media has the advantage of using git smudge filters rather than
  git-annex's pile of symlinks, and it may be a tighter fit for certian
  situations. It lacks git-annex's support for widely distributed storage,
  using only a single backend data store. It also does not support
  partial checkouts of file contents, like git-annex does.