Re: [GD-General] Re: asset & document management

[Neil S. <ne...@r0...>]

> Why aren't they storing the most recent file and then doing the binary
diffs
> backwards? So they store the diff of how to get from the newest file to
the
> next newest file. That way the newest file would be fast to use, you can
> save full files every time you branch etc. Might be slower to get old
> versions but that's mostly for backup/safety anyway.

Well, they aren't storing any binary diffs at the moment, never mind
backwards. ;)

I get your point, but I don't think they were willing to compromise
performance on _any_ revision of a file, including the most common usage of
getting the latest version.

One of the things they seem to pride themselves in is Perforce's ability to
reliably roll-back to any changelist or label very quickly, specifically as
a bug-finding tool, i.e. you can roll back to a version where a nasty bug
does not exist and then roll forward to see what broke. This would not be
possible if they only optimised for the latest version of a file, so they
chose not to store binary diffs at all.

What I was suggesting was a halfway-house, where you could tradeoff overall
performance (on all files) against disk usage.

- Neil.