I’ve created a utility called tardelta (ebuild available) that people using containers may be interested in. Here’s the README:
It is possible to optimize docker containers such that multiple containers are based off of a single copy of a common base image. If containers are constructed from tarballs, then it can be useful to create a delta tarball which contains the differences between a base image and a derived image. The delta tarball can then be layered on top of the base image using a Dockerfile like the following:
FROM base
ADD delta.tar.xz /Many different types of containers can thus be derived from a common base image, while sharing a single copy of the base image. This saves disk space, and can also reduce memory consumption since it avoids having duplicate copies of base image data in the kernel’s buffer cache.