A more efficient up2date service using binary diffs

[Bill Rugolsky Jr.]

On Wed, Mar 09, 2005 at 01:23:29PM -0500, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> While I don't think i would actively encourage people to work on
> this.. from a manhour priority perspective... if interested parties
> are intent on spending their personal time on this.. I would say there
> is only one way forward..and that is incrementally. Instead of
> fighting to convince developers for existing projects to include new
> functionality they have reserverations about... build a stand-alone
> tool set that can be used to generate the deltas and then re-generate
> the rpms on the clientside for the distro package management tools to
> use. Find a subset of mirrors to offer that service and get people to
> test it. First get a stand-alone implementation tha can be used to
> layer the experimental functionality over existing tools... before
> worrying about integrating that functionality into existing tools.
 
That's a good idea.  I'd start here:

    http://zsync.moria.org.uk/

Yep, client-side rsync.  I don't know the patent status in the US
(Google for earlier discussions), and don't want to know.  Get it
before the EU becomes a police state too. :-(

It should be an afternoon's work to combine the above with:

   http://rpmrebuild.sourceforge.net/

and have a tool that will mirror update directories that contains
.zsync files.  Run some tests locally, then convince a repository
in the free world to give it whirl.  If it works out, perhaps the
signatures could go in a repository metadata file.

Regards,

	Bill Rugolsky