Be findable where people look for a self-hosted LFS server

[BryanFRD]

Nobody can pick LFSX today unless they already know the name. It is on GitHub, crates.io, npm and GHCR, and absent from every place someone ends up when they go looking for a Git LFS server to run themselves.

The instinct is to buy a domain and build a site. That is the last step, not the first: the places people actually arrive from link to the repository, not to a domain, and most of them accept a project this young. One does not, and that one sets the calendar.

Now

• The git-lfs wiki's own implementations list. The canonical answer to "what can I run", maintained by the git-lfs project itself, community-editable, 78 revisions, last touched in May. It lists 40+ open-source servers under three headings — including jasonwhite/rudolfs, the server this one replaced in our own homelab. One wiki edit, no review queue, and it is the single highest-value listing there is.
• Artifact Hub, for the chart. Both GHCR packages are public, and the chart now carries the annotations the listing is built from — registering the repository is the remaining step, and it needs an account there. People deploying on Kubernetes search there before they search GitHub, and the chart is already published to GHCR — the listing is a repository registration, nothing more.
• GitHub topics. — added lfs-server, kubernetes, helm, gamedev, unity, zstd, deduplication, file-locking, version-control. Today: axum, git, git-lfs, rust, self-hosted. Missing the ones people actually search: lfs-server, kubernetes, helm, gamedev, unity, zstd, deduplication. Free, immediate.
• The repository's homepage field. — set to the README until a docs site exists. It is the link GitHub renders at the top of the page and in search results.

December

• awesome-selfhosted. Entries are a YAML file and a pull request, and the rule is that the first tagged release must be more than four months old. LFSX's first release is v0.2.0, 14 August 2026 — so it is eligible from mid-December 2026 and a submission before then is a wasted review. Worth a calendar entry rather than an attempt.

What a listing has to say

Forty open-source servers are already on that wiki page. A line saying "a Git LFS server in Rust" competes with several of them and distinguishes nothing. What this one does that the others do not, in the order that matters to someone hosting for a team:

• objects stored once across repositories, with hard links as the reference count
• compressed at rest, measured at 71% on a real Unity store, with ranges preserved through framing
• integrity verifiable without a manifest, and a documented restore procedure
• file locking, resumable transfers, permissions delegated to the forge so access is revoked by removing someone from the repository

That is the sentence to write once and reuse in every listing.

Then, and only then, a domain

A docs site earns its place when there is something to index that a README cannot hold — the operations guide, the benchmark numbers, the compression measurements, a page per configuration knob. All of that now exists, which is what makes the site worth considering at all; it would have been an empty shell a week ago.

What it should not be is a marketing site. The audience is people who will run this on their own disk, and what convinces them is the throughput figure, the restore procedure and the integrity check — not a hero section.

[BryanFRD]

Status update, and the December submission prepared so it does not have to be rebuilt from scratch.

Done since the issue was written

• The repository homepage now points at https://lfsx.dev instead of the README anchor. The condition the issue set ("until a docs site exists") is met: the site carries the docs, the operations guide and the benchmark numbers.
• The chart annotations for Artifact Hub are in place and current (category, license, links, images at 1.6.5).

Artifact Hub, the remaining manual step

Needs an account, so it cannot be automated from here:

1. Sign in at artifacthub.io (GitHub OAuth works)
2. Control Panel, Add repository
3. Kind: Helm charts, Name: lfsx, URL: oci://ghcr.io/ferrlabs/charts/lfsx

The listing builds itself from the chart annotations. The "verified publisher" badge is a separate optional step (an artifacthub-repo.yml pushed as an OCI artifact beside the chart) and can be done later.

awesome-selfhosted, ready to submit on 2026-12-14

First tagged release is v0.2.0 on 2026-08-14, so the four-month rule is satisfied from December 14, 2026. Submitting earlier is a wasted review by their own policy. Everything below matches their real schema (checked against the Gitea and Forgejo entries) and their style rules (no "self-hosted", no "open-source", no leading article).

File to add in awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted-data, at software/lfsx.yml:

name: LFSX
website_url: https://lfsx.dev
source_code_url: https://github.com/FerrLabs/LFSX
description: Git LFS server that stores objects once across repositories, compresses them at rest, verifies integrity without a manifest, and delegates permissions to GitHub, GitLab, Gitea or Forgejo.
licenses:
  - MPL-2.0
platforms:
  - Rust
  - Docker
  - K8S
tags:
  - Software Development - Project Management

stargazers_count, updated_at, current_release and commit_history are filled by their bot, not by the contributor. The tag is the category Gitea and Forgejo live in; no Git LFS server is listed there today.

Commit message and PR title, per their convention: add LFSX

PR body:

LFSX is a Git LFS server in Rust: objects are stored once across repositories with hard links as the reference count, compressed at rest (measured at 71% on a real Unity store, with range requests preserved through framing), and verifiable without a manifest. File locking, resumable transfers, and permissions delegated to GitHub, GitLab, Gitea or Forgejo, so revoking someone upstream revokes them here.

First tagged release: v0.2.0, 2026-08-14. Licensed MPL-2.0, distributed as a static binary, Docker image and Helm chart.

[BryanFRD]

Survey refresh, 2026-09-02. Where things stand, venue by venue.

Done

• Artifact Hub: listing live at https://artifacthub.io/packages/helm/lfsx/lfsx with verified publisher, signed chart (cosign) and values schema all green. Official status requested in [OFFICIAL] LFSX artifacthub/hub#4870, waiting on their team.
• GitHub topics: 14 topics on the repo (git-lfs, lfs-server, self-hosted, rust, gamedev, unity, kubernetes, helm, ...). Nothing to add.
• crates.io: lfsx-server is published with keywords (git, git-lfs, lfs, server, self-hosted) and categories; lib.rs mirrors it automatically.

Found listed, but stale: the git-lfs wiki

The Implementations page of the git-lfs wiki is the canonical list of LFS servers, and LFSX is already on it. The entry is out of date though: it says permissions are delegated "to GitHub or GitLab", predating Gitea/Forgejo support, S3 storage and encryption at rest.

A direct wiki edit is denied (403, editing is restricted to collaborators), so the update has to go through a maintainer. Proposed replacement text:

A Git LFS server in Rust that stores each object once across repositories, compresses and optionally encrypts objects at rest, and serves resumable ranged downloads from local or S3-compatible storage. Supports file locking, and delegates permissions to GitHub, GitLab, Gitea or Forgejo. Ships as a static binary, Docker image and Helm chart.

Scheduled

• awesome-selfhosted: submission package ready in the comment above, eligible 2026-12-14 (four months after v0.2.0).

Evaluated and passed on

• awesome-sysadmin: its Version control section lists VCS themselves (Git, Mercurial, Fossil), not LFS servers. No fitting category.
• awesome-rust: no LFS project listed, git tooling sits under "System tools" (terminal clients, not servers). Weak fit, not worth the review round-trip.

Possible but manual (account required)

• alternativeto.net: an "LFSX" page as an alternative to GitHub LFS / rudolfs would catch comparison searches.
• selfh.st: submission form for their self-hosted app directory.

Both need a human account, so they stay optional user actions rather than tasks here.

[BryanFRD]

Status refresh, 2026-09-04. The two items that were waiting on other people both landed.

Artifact Hub: everything is green

The listing at https://artifacthub.io/packages/helm/lfsx/lfsx now reports official: true, alongside verified publisher, a cosign-signed chart and a values schema. The official badge was the last flag left, and artifacthub/hub#4870 is closed.

Getting there took one real fix rather than paperwork: the chart's .helmignore had been excluding README.md from the packaged artifact since the chart landed in #43, so every version pushed to oci://ghcr.io/ferrlabs/charts/lfsx shipped without the readme Artifact Hub renders the page from. Fixed in #294, and chart 1.11.1 was the first release to carry it.

git-lfs wiki: entry updated

The Implementations page now carries the current description, deduplication named explicitly, S3 storage, encryption at rest, and Gitea/Forgejo alongside GitHub and GitLab. Filed as git-lfs/git-lfs#6344 and applied by a maintainer.

Worth recording for next time: the wiki's web editor is open to anyone, but pushing to git-lfs.wiki.git over git is gated on write access to the repository, which is why the clone-and-push attempt got a 403. Editing in the browser is the route.

Also since the last refresh

The README now leads with the site's logo and hero (#321), so the repo landing page and lfsx.dev tell the same story, and a doc-freshness pass (#320) caught the README claims that had gone stale.

What is left

• awesome-selfhosted: package ready in the comment above, eligible 2026-12-14 (four months after v0.2.0). Submitting earlier is a wasted review by their own policy.
• alternativeto.net and selfh.st: still worthwhile, still require a human account, so they stay optional.

Everything that can be done from here is done; this stays open only to carry the December submission.