[RFC] store inventory in tab-separated file

[Aaron Bentley]

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Robert Collins wrote:
> This seems to have gone quiet. I'd love to see a more compact repository
> format: Every byte we have to send on the wire costs us.

Another thing we could look at is a multi-parent delta format.

I have a sneaking suspicion that merges are wasting a lot of space.  Our
deltas are always against the first parent, so in a merge, all lines
introduced by the second parent will be new in the delta.  That gets
repeated every time someone else does a merge of the same revision.

So in a repository, the same lines introduced by the second parent will
occur over and over again.

I've got an idea for what a multi-parent delta format would look like,
but it's too late at night for drawing up specs.

Aaron
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