# elfshaker/elfshaker

elfshaker stores binary objects efficiently

Repository: https://github.com/elfshaker/elfshaker
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/elfshaker
Language: Rust
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: executable-packing, version-control, binary-storage
Last push: 2026-07-08T18:02:35+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 64/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 91, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 1784, "days_push": 56, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2336, forks 49 (observed 2026-08-28T04:06:38.048053+00:00)

## What it is
elfshaker is a high-performance CLI version control system written in Rust, fine-tuned for storing binary files. It packs directory snapshots into highly-compressed pack files with fast on-demand extraction, achieving extreme compression ratios on sets of similar binaries.

## Use cases
- store many similar binary builds with minimal disk space
- quickly extract any revision of a compiler build for bisection
- snapshot and restore object files from incremental builds
- compress thousands of versions of executables into small pack files
- speed up regression bisection across large build histories

## When to choose
- you need to store many similar binary files or build artifacts efficiently
- you want fast (seconds) access to arbitrary snapshots of large binary sets
- you're bisecting builds of large projects like LLVM
- deduplication of mostly-unchanged files dominates your storage

## When to avoid
- you need general-purpose source code version control with branching and merging
- your files are mostly unique with little shared content
- you need a GUI or hosted collaboration workflow
- your data changes wholesale between versions so deltas are large

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: active
- function: version-control, compression, file-system, cli
- domain: developer-tools, version-control, files, performance
- platform: windows, rust, cli
- tags: binary-storage, executable-packing, deduplication, snapshot-storage, bisection, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- elfshaker/elfshaker (main) score 64

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:38.048053+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T02:37:35.751239+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/elfshaker/elfshaker (fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:38.048053+00:00, sha 880dd880196e)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.