[jakubw]

bsdiff is not a general purpose binary delta algorithm, it's targeted at executables. When you change a single line in the source code of a program and recompile it, bsdiff produces a small diff, even though a normal binary diff between the old and new executable would be huge due to how even a single extra instruction can cause many more addresses to shift. bsdiff wouldn't be particularly useful here.

[sigil]

This is true. Re-reading the bsdiff paper, it's pretty tailored to executable file formats.

http://www.daemonology.net/papers/bsdiff.pdf

[cperciva]

It works fine on non-executables too. Executables are the hard case, that's all.