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Data Model

Seafile internally uses a data model similar to GIT's. It consists of Repo, Branch, Commit, FS, and Block.

Repo

A repo is also called a library. Every repo has an unique id (UUID), and attributes like description, creator, password.

Branch

Unlike git, only two predefined branches is used, i.e., local and master.

In PC client, modifications will first be committed to the local branch. Then the master branch is downloaded from server, and merged into local branch. After that the local branch will be uploaded to server. Then the server will fast-forward its master branch to the head commit of the just uploaded branch.

When users update a repo on the web, modifications will first be committed to temporary branch on the server, then merged into the master branch.

Commit

Like in GIT.

FS

There are two types of FS objects, SeafDir Object and Seafile Object. SeafDir Object represents a directory, and Seafile Object represents a file.

Block

A file is further divided into blocks with variable lengths. We use Content Defined Chunking algorithm to divide file into blocks. A clear overview of this algorithm can be found at http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/papers/lbfs:sosp01/lbfs.pdf. On average, a block's size is around 1MB.

This mechanism makes it possible to deduplicate data between different versions of frequently updated files, improving storage efficiency. It also enables transferring data to/from multiple servers in parallel.