How bad would it be to change the format of uasset files to something text based, so that real diffs could be made for small changes?
I’m not thinking XML, or even something simpler like JSON – it’s totally possible to describe various recursive and binary-like structures in text format with much less overhead, faster to parse, yet still give diff tools a fighting chance to do something smart by being judicious in where newlines go. (Leading whitespace for lines isn’t even necessary or desired.)
How close is a uasset in structure to something old-school like a tagged binary file (AIFF, RIFF, etc?)
Have you tried opening any uasset files in some text editor?
Most of them are text as far as I know. Binary assets such as meshes and textures probably aren’t.
Let me clarify: When I said “uasset” I meant “Unreal assets in general.” I think text could be used for almost everything except textures and compiled code.
The specific kind of file that mostly irks me is actually “.umap” – I bet that could be made text with very little cost in space or performance (at least for pre-cooked data.)
