changelogs in packages and space use

[Florian Festi]

seth vidal wrote:
> 8157 pkgs in rawhide repos:
>   new changelogs: 12M
>   old changelogs: 31M
> 
> on my system 1128 packages installed:
>   new changelogs: 2.2M
>   old changelogs: 8.6M
> 
> 
> That may not seem like much but when we're squinched for space in 700M
> on a livecd that 8.6M might be all that's needed. Moreover it may be a
> bit silly to be carting all of this history around in all the pkgs and
> repodata and in the rpmdb. Esp if we're trying to trim download sizes
> for various items. So things we can do:

At first I think starting this discussion with the live CD in mind is a 
mistake. If 700MB is not sufficient use an DVD - or replace GNOME/KDE by 
FVWM. Saving a few megs won't cut it anyway. Crippling RPM/our packages just 
to create a LiveCD sounds like a bad idea. Especially as the Fedora (as a 
usable installation) grows from release to release and won't fit into the 
won space quite soon.

Nevertheless we are moving a lot of of unnecessary data over the wire. The 
way to go in the long run would be to compress the rpm headers. This would 
not only reduce the bandwidth wasted for the changelog but also for all the 
other tags - the file list to name the biggest one. Panu to the rescue!

Florian