[[!comment format=mdwn
 username="http://joeyh.name/"
 nickname="joey"
 subject="comment 3"
 date="2013-05-29T16:50:35Z"
 content="""
Treating each version of a file as a separate object that is stored and transmitted separately is one of the core simplifying assumptions of git-annex. Among other things it makes it easy to have dumb special remotes that are mere key/value stores. And it keeps it easy to understand.

I don't consider this a problem as far as storage goes. Disk space is cheap; git-annex allows dropping unused versions of files from repositories that are not on large cheap storage.

For file transfer, it would be nice to find optimisations that don't require changing this simplifying assumption. This can be done at least for rsync I think. The [[design/assistant/deltas]] page is where the design of this is or will be worked on.
"""]]
