xdelta

Properly tracking changes would allow less disk space to be used. xdelta is not supposed to be used on compressed data [1], but my VCS will handle that transparently using less space. You are right to be nervous about auto merges, and that will be the biggest work when implementing support for a file type. But I think it is possible in many cases. For example, Blender files store everything in one file. You can reference things between files, and people do that, but often, you will still want to store the material for a mesh with the mesh. If someone changes the mesh, and someone else changes a material, those changes should automerge. [1]: https://github.com/jmacd/xdelta/issues/193#issuecomment-1000...

Wait, what? "After some thinking, I figured it would be hilarious to actually implement a basic version control system on these primitives. In hindsight, it's probably closer to terrifying than hilarious." Ah, ok. Also, if you want to experiment with diffs and recreating versions: Patch: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patch_(Unix) Xdelta: https://github.com/jmacd/xdelta