Happy to help and eventually take over.

I recommend the recent Wookash podcast with Chuck Jazdzewski, who was part of the team that created the original TV and much more in that ecosystem.

Interesting, looks like it's two completely separate implementations, one in Swift and one in Python.

It is exactly that. The macOS and GNOME versions share the same vision, but they are entirely different codebases.

Could be a fix for per-device asset optimization that got messed up somehow.

FTA: “The update text is appearing on apps that have not been updated in some time, as well as apps that received recent updates, so it's not clear what the apps have in common.”

⇒ I think that’s unlikely. If some optimization got broken that produces results that bad that it has to be fixed, users would have noticed in those apps that “have not been updated in some time”.

I am delaying it because iOS development is currently making me money but once that stops, I am so looking forward to moving back to Linux. Neither Windows or macOS are going in a good direction. The difference is only in the degree and speed of ensh*ttification. Ironically the only thing I might miss is the often criticized Xcode.

If you pirate a movie and reencode it, does that apply as well? You can still watch the movie and it is “obviously” the same movie, even though the bytes are completely different. Here you can use the program and it is, to the user, also the same.

At this point if a file format could have rounded corners I’m sure it would too.

So this fixes the problem when msvc is the required compiler. Does the zig C++ compiler bring anything to the table when clang is an option?

You still need headers and libraries that ship with MSVC.

Can I run this on my 486?

In that case you are supposed to use your /other/ backup. Which you have.

Defeating the point of deduplication...

You don't have backups if you only have one "backup". Look up sysadmin's 3-2-1.

On a single drive, deduplicate all you want. But you need to have two drives, at least, anyway.