Re: On Tracking Binary Files

[Patrick Berkeley <patrickberkeley@gmail.com>]

Thanks very much for the explanation .


On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 15:42, Nicolas Pitre <nico@cam.org> wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Apr 2009, Patrick Berkeley wrote:
>
>> Does Git track the deltas on binary files?
>
> Yes.  And actually git's delta storage doesn't care at all whether a
> file is text or binary.
>
>> Someone in #git mentioned that if the binaries change too much Git no
>> longer just stores the changes. If this is the case, what is the
>> breaking point where Git goes from storing the deltas to the entire
>> new file?
>
> If two versions of the same file are simply too different to make delta
> compression worth it, then no deltas are used.  It is still possible
> that a third version of the same file would produce a nice delta against
> either the first or second version though, in which case that third
> version will be stored as a delta.  And so on.
>
> A sophisticated set of euristics is applied to the list of objects as a
> whole to determine the best delta arrangement possible.  So there is no
> such thing as a simple "breaking point".
>
>
> Nicolas
>