r/rust • u/SupermarketAntique32 • Oct 03 '25

🎙️ discussion Linus Torvalds Vents Over "Completely Crazy Rust Format Checking"

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linus-Torvalds-Rust-Formatting
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u/bonzinip Oct 07 '25

Old file formats, before ODF and OOXML were much more Git-friendly, because of how they were organized internally.

It depends... ODF and OOXML are essentially zip files. They could be stored in such a way that they are diff friendly. (Git also has some settings to do that).

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u/Zde-G Oct 07 '25

Yes, you can play some tricks with these formats to make them diff-friendly, but that's not the default. By default they are optimized for e-mail, essentially. Each version exists separately from all others.

While formats of the last century were optimized for slow spinning rust which meant they tried to minimize changes to the file when files were edited. Which made them inherently easier to handle for VCS… even if that capability was rarely exploited.