[cesarb]

> Aren’t git commits stored as patches?

No, they aren't, git commits are stored as snapshots. Each git commit has one tree, which is a snapshot of the state after the commit; zero or more parent commits; a pair of authors with corresponding timestamps; a commit message; and nothing more. Any patch you see in git is an illusion, made by comparing the commit's tree with the parent commit's tree.

[dahart]

Thank you. Sheesh I feel like I should have known this about git. That would make diffing very far apart changes super fast.

So what's the advantage to explicit storage in patches over snapshots? Are diffs between snapshots not able to capture the same information that explicit patches have?

[erik_seaberg]

The trouble with patches is that you can't get engineers to reliably declare whenever they copy or move code and where it came from. This is part of why svn merging was such a trainwreck, undeclared copies and moves (which look like delete+insert) almost always conflicted.