I played with making a git alternative that was streamlined according to workflow. I haven't completely abandoned it, but my core idea was that you can use ast path to compress the data further.
Like you said git is really efficient, and even though I went in with some criticism because of the work(mess) that is chromium and the deep hacking I did there to fix stuff between versions without forcing a complete rebuild
I came to the conclusion that as a compression alternative, my approach wasn't worth it. Git did a better job!
It can get even smaller when loose objects get packed into packfiles because of delta compression: a whole bunch of identical files can be stored in minimal overhead over storing one copy.
Right, packfile size is really what matters in the long-term. A tiny change to a file in the short term just adds the whole thing again (compressed), whereas a tiny change in a packfile shouldn't add much at all. Unless you've got very limited disk space, the long-term is the only size that matters.
Like you said git is really efficient, and even though I went in with some criticism because of the work(mess) that is chromium and the deep hacking I did there to fix stuff between versions without forcing a complete rebuild
I came to the conclusion that as a compression alternative, my approach wasn't worth it. Git did a better job!
Anyway here's the attempt: https://github.com/pankon/gat
Thanks!
Small nitpick: Use long options and your code samples become self explanatory!