Yes,-ish. However, there's also the question of what operations are efficient. (Diff feels very performant in git but) maybe having the diffs as the first-cla

Yes,-ish. However, there's also the question of what operations are efficient. (Diff feels very performant in git but) maybe having the diffs as the first-class objects enables doing something efficiently that git doesn't do. (perhaps, identifying when identical patches have occurred in different portions of the history?) I've used several patch-based VCs (RCS and CVS) but I think they pre-date this "sound theory of patches" and instead the use of patch-style representation was for optimizing storage. (just as git uses packs and deltas to optimize storage and performance, f'rinstance) So I don't really know what I'm missing. (If the sound theory of patches would let me better understand what occurred at a merge commit than git's tooling, that'd be just about enough to sell me on switching. except for the network effects of git & github.)