rsync and rawhide

[Bill Rugolsky Jr.]

On Mon, Oct 20, 2003 at 05:53:36PM -0400, Alan Cox wrote:
> > The problem is that RPM is a compressed format.  Change one byte in it and
> > there are chances ALL the remainder of the file is different.  One thing
> 
> gzip can be patched to avoid this. Debian have done so for apt/dpkg (Rusty
> did a talk on this).  It was tried ages ago but caused a problem that should
> now be fixed.
> 
> Another big problem for the ftp sites is that rsync is relatively cpu/mem
> intensive so 3000 parallel rsyncs isnt too cool
 
Which of course is trivially solved by reverse-rsync, reducing the whole
protocol to a get on the signature file followed by a bunch of range-gets
on the target file.  This can be done with any static web server,
notably RHCA aka TUX. Instead of 10-50 rsync clients, one could have
5000 reverse-rsync clients.

Unfortunately, so we are told, this obvious change to the protocol is
covered by one or more silly patents.

	Bill Rugolsky