You still do not seem to understand that you would only have to have a single patch at any given instant. You would have the same number of files. They would be smaller.
You do not seem to understand that it WOULDN'T WORK that way. People wouldn't have the next to last thing. And you'd have to keep N copies around.
I've read this entire thread and I've not yet seen a convincing answer to: user X has a version they pulled from test3 not the final fc release but they've applied most of the other patches up to the final fc. How do they get there. So you have to keep patches available or just end up back at square one. So not only am I keeping the original I'm ALSO keeping some patches on my mirror.
You're right, in the best of possible worlds it would work but I'm arguing for the bad cases b/c I'm not pangloss and you're not candide.
-sv