Epic Games launches Lore open-source version control system
Original: Epic Games announces Lore version control system
Why This Matters
Addresses game development's unique needs for managing large binary assets alongside code, enabling teams to scale version control systems efficiently.
Epic Games announced Lore, a next-generation open-source version control system designed for scalability with large binary assets. The MIT-licensed tool targets games and entertainment projects, offering centralized architecture with content-addressed storage and on-demand data hydration.
Epic Games has released Lore, an open-source version control system optimized for projects combining code with large binary assets, particularly games and entertainment. The system uses a centralized, content-addressed architecture representing repository state as Merkle trees with an immutable revision chain. Key features include content-addressed storage using cryptographic hashing for fast comparisons and integrity checks, chunked storage for large files to reduce duplication, on-demand data hydration enabling sparse workspaces that download only needed files, lightweight branching with fast switching, and free branch creation for experimentation. Lore supports multiple programming languages through SDKs including JavaScript, Python, C#, Go, and C/C++, with a complete command-line interface and full-surface API for customization. The system implements cryptographic security through immutable revision chains where each revision's hash is derived from its state and parent hashes. Epic Games released Lore under an MIT license with full source code available on GitHub, emphasizing the belief that open ecosystems require collaborative development using open standards. The platform supports local setup and scales from individual developers to large teams through a service-backed architecture with caching infrastructure.