version control - Is the git storage model wasteful?

Question

I was reading about how git stores changes in The Git Object Model¹.

It sounds like if I change one line in a file, it's going to re-store the entire file. Does this waste a lot of space compared to say, Subversion which only stores diffs?

(Or am I misunderstanding the storage model?)

_{¹ As of 2011 when question was asked. Current closest link is Git Internals - Git Objects.}

Answer 1

Git will eventually pack everything into delta-compressed archives during the regular course of its internal maintenance, at which point this is no longer an issue.

This isn't really an issue today though. Git's philosophy is that disk space is cheap, and it's better optimize for speed rather than storage efficiency. Chances are you'll be better served by a SCM which is twice as fast, as opposed to one which requires half the disk space.

See the Git Book's chapter on The Packfile as well as git repack and git-pack-objects.