SparkleShare is an open source file synchronization and collaboration tool somewhat similar to Dropbox, available for Linux, Mac OSX and Windows.

SparkleShare uses GIT version control system and can be used with code hosting services like GitHub, Bitbucket or Gitorious as well as your own server.

Sparkleshare is an open source tool to synchronize your files in the cloud and it can use a GitHub, Gitorious or your own private GIT server. For now, SparkleShare is easy to install under Linux and Mac, "but it’s hard to get running and it doesn’t integrate well with the system" on Windows, says Hylke, the SparkleShare developer. Android and iPhone clients might be released in the future too.

Sparkleshare is a tool to synchronize your files in the cloud - like Dropbox or SpiderOak - but unlike these, Sparkleshare is open source and allows you to use your own server. Sparkleshare uses GIT so if you delete/modify some files by accident, you can easily revert the changes. You can use it with your own server, GitHub or Gitorious. In this post I'll only cover setting up Sparkleshare with GitHub.

Sparkleshare is still in development and until now you had to compile it yourself but I've recently came across a PPA that provides Sparkleshare (Client) GIT snapshots so you can easily install it in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal (and a different PPA for Ubuntu 10.04).

Sure, you can always work with SVN repositories from the command line but sometimes a graphical SVN client is more convenient - for example you can use it to check which files are not added to the repository yet. And when it comes to graphical SVN clients, I'm sure most of you will agree when I say that RabbitVCS, a "set of graphical tools written to provide simple and straightforward access to the version control systems you use" inspired by the famous TortoiseSVN, is probably the best such tool for Linux.

SparkleShare is a syncing tool similar to Dropbox but which allows you to use your own server (or some already existing servers). It uses GIT so if you delete/modify some files by accident, you can easily revert the changes.

Some GIT servers support the http protocol but some don't and if you're behind a firewall like me (at work - so I don't have control over it and most ports are blocked) you basically can't access GIT.

But with the help of WebUpd8 reader RKV and this post, I got GIT working behind a firewall using TOR.