A more efficient up2date service using binary diffs

[M A Young]

On Tue, 15 Mar 2005, Thomas Hille wrote:

> But I don't think that changing names/paths occur that often (I may be
> wrong here, but I doubt it).

One place this does happen is docs files where the path depends on the rpm
version.

> The other argument against using the whole rpm would be resources:
> memory consumption is O(n) according to Joe's nice page with the test
> results. And time is O((n+m) log n) according to the bsdiff site. And
> having big packages like OOo or kernel reducing the input-file-size
> would do a great job in reducing needed resources.

Splitting rpms up will save processing resources, but is likely to take up
a bit more bandwidth due to the per file overheads. It certainly won't
save bandwidth as the deltas ignore anything that is the same at both
ends. The real solution is to split up rpms a bit more and not having huge
single rpms that are the size of a CD when decompressed. Fortunately it
seems people agree with me, as it looks like openoffice.org will be in
smaller pieces in FC4.

	Michael Young