Checkpoint

Checkpoint is an amazing Python module that lets you keep an eye on all the files in a directory (recursively). With this software, you can reset your directory to any specific past point where you did a commit to save your changes.

This software is highly beneficial to graphic designers, animators, musicians, and others who are searching for a straightforward solution for versioning large files. It's also available as a command-line-utility that can be used by regular users to save snapshots of their files and restore them from the history.

Moreover, there's a Python API that developers can use to integrate Checkpoint into their software that needs simple file versioning. However, what's a Media-Archive System? Is it a Version Control System?

Bazaar and Mercurial are two great examples of Version Control Systems that have already been implemented in Python. These systems are optimized for overseeing changes to source codes by utilizing diffs. Though they can handle binary files, these files' operations might not be quick. In the Bazaar FAQ, it's mentioned that it's primarily a source code control system, not a media archive system. Thus, supporting enormous binary files or multi-gigabyte trees isn't a priority.

That's precisely where Checkpoint comes in. Designed specifically for dealing with large binary files, such as audio, images, video, and many others, Checkpoint makes it easy and quick to manage them.

Additionally, the key difference between Checkpoint and Version Control Systems (VCS) is that it automatically detects your file changes. In a VCS, you need to "add" files to the repository via certain commands like svn add somefile.txt.,But Checkpoint does the job automatically in a Media-Archive system where ease of use trumps intermediary files and generated files.

Notably, the Checkpoint command-line utility is exceptionally easy to understand, eliminating the need for users to learn any complex VCS terminology or concepts.