@pernia @allison @cvnt @lanodan @sysrq :bigbosssalute:

> Vac is an application for storing a collection of files and directories as a single object, similar in functionality to the utilities tar and zip. With vac, the contents of the selected files are stored as a tree of blocks on a Venti server. The root fingerprint for this tree is written to a vac archive file specified by the user, which consists of an ASCII representation of the 20 byte root fingerprint plus a fixed header string, and is always 45 bytes long. A corresponding program, called unvac, enables the user to restore files from a vac archive. Naturally, unvac requires access to the Venti server that contains the actual data, but in most situations this is transparent.

The idea is that the userspace parts replace tar.

There's some about fossil in that one, and then there's fossil here: http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/fossil/ .

Most of the questions you have can be answered by skimming those two papers and ignoring the parts that you don't understand.