A more efficient up2date service using binary diffs

[Paul A. Houle]

On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 21:21:57 -0500, Chuck R. Anderson <cra at WPI.EDU> wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 16, 2005 at 01:44:13AM +0100, Thomas Hille wrote:
>> Don't get me wrong here. I just meant to diff two rpms in a way, were
>> you take apart the two rpms diff their content, (including _all_
>> metadata of course) put the diffs in some kind of container (prpms?).
>> Then, when the end-user would update the old installed rpm would be used
>> in conjunction with the diff-container to produce a new current rpm.
>
> I wonder if Jigdo would work.  The component files would be downloaded
> separately, along with the jigdo template file.  These would be
> combined on the client end to form the original rpm file, identical in
> every way.
>

	Something along these lines might make sense.

	We really have to think about the ease of use standards set by the  
competition.  I recently had to buy a Mac mini for some consulting work,   
and really,  Mac OS X makes any Linux distribution look bad.

	I doubt either Windows Update or the equivalent under Mac OS X has a  
granularity as coarse as rpms.  Neither of those requires that you keep  
your OS disk around or burns up 4G on your disk with packages.

	Perhaps Fedora can get away with looking like somebody's science  
project,  but for what RHEL costs (six arms and five legs,)  I think users  
would expect a little more.