Git Internals: Why Your Commits Aren't Actually Diffs

📰 Dev.to · Doogal Simpson

Learn how Git stores project states as full snapshots, not diffs, and why this matters for version control

intermediate Published 28 Mar 2026
Action Steps
  1. Explore Git's content-addressable filesystem using the git cat-file command
  2. Run git ls-tree to visualize the tree structure of a commit
  3. Use git hash-object to see how Git stores file contents as blobs
  4. Configure a Git repository to store large files using git lfs
  5. Test the differences between Git's snapshot-based storage and traditional diff-based systems
Who Needs to Know This

Developers and DevOps teams can benefit from understanding Git internals to improve version control and collaboration

Key Insight

💡 Git's content-addressable filesystem stores project states as full snapshots, allowing for efficient version control and collaboration

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💡 Git stores project states as full snapshots, not diffs!

Key Takeaways

Learn how Git stores project states as full snapshots, not diffs, and why this matters for version control

Full Article

TL;DR: Git is a content-addressable filesystem that stores project states as full snapshots rather...
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