A more efficient up2date service using binary diffs

[Joe Desbonnet]

The idea of being able to randomly access portions of a new update RPM
by doing byte range requests is interesting. It could in theory reduce
the size of the delta file.  However this only saves on mirror *disk
space*. It does not reduce bandwidth consumption: the client still has
to download this either in the delta file or by separate byte range
requests.

Looking at the size of the updates directory of the FC3/i386 (8GB+) I
doubt that mirror maintainers would notice another GB or two.

Anyhow, I would propose that any such delta RPM system allow more than
one delta algorithm to be used, so if people come up with clever
algorithms in future we can seamlessly incorporate it into the system
without breaking anything already out there.

Joe.

On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 09:28:40 +0000, Nigel Metheringham
<Nigel.Metheringham at dev.intechnology.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> While we are using 3rd party mirrors to distribute updates we will need
> to have absolutely minimal requirements on the server to be smart - pure
> dumb file serving over an existing protocol, maybe leveraging byte
> ranges as the bleeding edge of requirements.
>