Hi GrievingTurkey78
First, I would look at the CLI clearml-data as a baseline for implementing such a tool:
Docs:
https://github.com/allegroai/clearml/blob/master/docs/datasets.md
Implementation :
https://github.com/allegroai/clearml/blob/master/clearml/cli/data/main.py
Regrading your questions:
(1) No, a new dataset version will only store the diff from the parent (if files are removed it stored the metadata that says the file was removed)
(2) Yes any get operation will download unzip and merge the files into the local storage, for easier access. The the 'mutable` copy will create a copy of the files, where as the "regular" get will create softlinks to the local cached copy of the unzipped files