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by MaxBarraclough 2043 days ago
> "automatic GC" which combines these "loose objects" into a "pack file"; and within that "pack file", it uses a binary diff (a xdelta) between similar objects to reduce the total size

Isn't it the case then that git doesn't store in full every version of a tracked file?
1 comments
yencabulator 2043 days ago
Deduplication and compression do not imply diffs.
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MaxBarraclough 2042 days ago
git does perform delta compression. From what I can gather, git's storage engine uses conventional compression (zlib), deduplication (exactly identical files need not be stored twice) and delta compression (between similar files).

The question was does git's implementation store - in full - every version of a tracked file? The answer is that it doesn't. git has a sophisticated storage engine precisely to avoid the inefficiencies of the naive approach.

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