OS Future now that Fedora Legacy defunct

[James Wilkinson]

I wrote:
> 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.

Justin W wrote:
> 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.

I think you've just answered your own question.

Computers will be in any state (as far as a particular package goes):
uninstalled, unpatched, or any number of previous patches installed.
*Either* you have minimal (possibly delta) RPMs to get users from any of
those states to the current updated package, which means one RPM per
state, *or* you require some of them to download multiple patch RPMs,
which will be larger than the minimal RPM they'd ideally like.

And at some point, the series of RPMs is larger and more of a problem
than just having full package RPMs.

James.

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