yum-presto - fast updates for Fedora 7

[Kam Leo]

On 4/4/07, Valent Turkovic <valent.turkovic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Please go to:
> http://hosted.fedoraproject.org/projects/presto
> and help beta test yum-presto.
>
> Q: What is yum-presto?
> A: If you used updated on SUSE or Mandriva then you already know of this
> feature. It is an update which doesn't download the whole RPM package
> but only the difference between old and new RPM packages.
>
> Q: Why use yum-presto?
> A: I run a few machines with Fedora, some which I update regularly, and
> some not so much. When I come to the machine which I haven't updated in
> a few weeks there are usually around 100-200MB of updates! Even though I
> have a broadband connection, it still takes a LOT of time to download
> all of the updated packages. Yum-presto uses deltarpms which give you
> only the difference between the old package which you already have and
> the new one you want. So downloads are significantly smaller and a lot
> quicker.
>
> Please help support this project so it goes through beta testing and
> gets full support in Fedora 7. This project needs you!
>
> Valent.

Good in theory, not so stellar in practice. Delta rpms use less
bandwidth (good for those on slow connections) but require more
processor horsepower (Yast online updater is the metric I'm using for
reference). On my old system which has an AMD K6-2 450 MHz it takes
much longer to update using openSUSE 10.2's Yast. I hope FC7's
implementation is better.