OS Future now that Fedora Legacy defunct

[Justin W]

James Wilkinson wrote:
> Justin W wrote:
>
>   
>> That brings me to a related question I've wondered for some time: why
>> do we have to download entire packages for updates? Why can't there be
>> an RPM package similar to patches? Then you'd only have to download
>> the difference in a package (and I don't mean a partial file, but just
>> whole files that have been updates.
>>     
>
> SuSE has something like this, called patch RPMs or delta RPMs: see
> ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/projects/deltarpm/README. Fedora has steered away
> from the concept to date.
>
> Part of the problem with delta RPMs is that they can take up more space
> and/or more download time: if most of the files have been recompiled
> against a different version of a library or with a different version of
> gcc, then one patch RPM could be more than half the size of the full
> package. If the package is updated again, then you've either got to
> apply two deltas to get from the original to the newest version (which
> will be larger than just getting the full RPM), or mirrors[1] have to
> carry two deltas (original to newest, and update to newest). And the
> mirror would have to carry the full updated version as well (for people
> who suddenly want to install the package for the first time), and
> probably the original package.
>
>   
I'm not trying to start a heated debate (just curious :-), but why would 
you have to have a patch rpm against both the original package and an 
updated package? Why couldn't it be set up like patches where you would 
require previous patch rpms to be installed, and we could even obsolete 
a patch rpm with a later patch rpm, bringing the download total back 
down again (this makes me think of what SP2 does for XP, eliminating the 
need for a googolplex KB updates, though I'm not considering the overall 
size here). I do see the point in an initial install after the release 
date would require downloading the package and all of the patches, so 
that could get to be a problem.
> [snip]
>   

Justin W