{"id":7012,"date":"2026-06-18T11:05:32","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T18:05:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/?p=7012"},"modified":"2026-06-18T11:05:32","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T18:05:32","slug":"epic-games-built-its-own-git-alternative-for-handling-large-files","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/?p=7012","title":{"rendered":"Epic Games Built Its Own Git Alternative For Handling Large Files"},"content":{"rendered":"

Epic Games used its State of Unreal 2026<\/a> keynote to announce Lore, an open source version control system the company built in-house and is releasing for free.<\/p>\n

You see, game and film projects have a workflow where they have to mix source code with large binary files such as build inputs, big data files, and other generated content. The problem is that most existing version control<\/a> tools were not built to handle that kind of combination well.<\/p>\n

Git<\/a> handles large binary files through an add-on called Git LFS<\/a>, rather than treating them as a built-in part of the system. Perforce<\/a> manages binaries better, but it needs a live connection to its server for routine tasks, and it is a closed, proprietary system that other companies cannot build tools on top of.<\/p>\n

Epic Games says none of the available systems combine binary handling, offline work, and a fully open specification together, which is why it built its own.<\/p>\n

Suggested Read \ud83d\udcd6:<\/strong> GitHub Alternatives to Host Your Open Source Projects<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

How does it work?<\/h2>\n
\"a<\/figure>\n

Lore keeps a server running as the authority for who can access a project and how conflicts get resolved, but everyday work like saving changes, recording a commit, or switching branches happens entirely on your machine, without needing an internet connection<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Every piece of content is given a unique fingerprint and stored only once, so identical data is never duplicated across files or branches.<\/p>\n

It also has a verification system, so the structure of every revision can be checked for tampering or corruption. Large files are broken into smaller pieces, so editing one part of a multi-gigabyte file does not require re-uploading the whole thing.<\/p>\n

And, by default, your machine only holds the files you are actually using, since Lore pulls down a file’s data only when something asks for it.<\/p>\n

The core library, server, and CLI are all written in Rust<\/strong>, with official SDKs for JavaScript, Python, C#, and Go. Everything routes through the same interface, so the CLI is not a special, privileged way of using Lore.<\/p>\n

Any tool built using the same interface can do everything the CLI does.<\/p>\n

Get started quickly<\/h2>\n

The project has not reached a stable release yet, with the most recent release<\/a> being 0.8.3, and Epic Games is warning that interfaces and storage formats could fluctuate from release to release.<\/p>\n

You do not need to have Rust installed or set up a container to try it out. One install script does the whole process of grabbing the CLI and server binary, dropping them into your PATH, and spinning up a server on your machine.<\/p>\n

The official guide<\/a> lists the script to get it configured on Linux:<\/p>\n

curl -fsSL https:\/\/raw.githubusercontent.com\/EpicGames\/lore\/main\/scripts\/install.sh | bash -s -- --demo<\/code><\/pre>\n
Beyond that, if you have any questions or are just looking to have a conversation surrounding it, there’s a Discord<\/a> server you can join that has people from the development team and the Lore community.<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Epic Games used its State of Unreal 2026 keynote to announce Lore, an open source version control system the company built in-house and is releasing for free. You see, game…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7012\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}