A suitable find command:

• with -printf
• or with -print0
• or a traditional tar with -print combined with a "tr" command that can translate newlines to nulls.

Compression

• Backshift prefers an xz binary with which to do compression, at least until there's a python module that directly supports xz.
• Backshift can fall back on the bz2 module, to do bzip2 compression.
• xz gives a bit better compression ratios than bzip2, but does come at the expense of many more execs.

Filesystems - for remote saves

• sshfs
• CIFS
• NFS
• ...but see the backshift notes for your OS, if any.
• Others are probably possible, but have not been tested. Perhaps Lustre, GFS, PVFS2, OCFS2...?

For building and/or testing:

• You may want SVN (Subversion)
• You want an m4 with which to create the pure python and/or cython rolling checksum modules