Re: Solving the compression dilema when rsync-ing Debian versions
>>>>> " " == Otto Wyss <otto.wyss@bluewin.ch> writes:
>>> So why not solve the compression problem at the root? Why not
>>> try to change the compression in a way so it does produce a
>>> compressed
> result
>>> with the same (or similar) difference rate as the source?
>> Are you going to hack at *every* different kind of file format
>> that you might ever want to rsync, to make it rsync friendly?
>>
> No, I want rsync not even to be mentioned. All I want is
> something similar to
> gzip --compress-like=old-foo foo
AFAIK thats NOT possible with gzip. Same with bzip2.
> where foo will be compressed as old-foo was or as aquivalent as
> possible. Gzip does not need to know anything about foo except
> how it was compressed. The switch "--compress-like" could be
> added to any compression algorithmus (bzip?) as long as it's
> easy to retrieve the compression scheme. Besides the following
> is completly legal but probably not very sensible
> gzip --compress-like=foo bar
> where bar will be compressed as foo even if they might be
> totally unrelated.
> Rsync-ing Debian packages will certainly take advantage of this
> solution but the solution itself is 100% pure compression
> specific. Anything which needs identical compression could
> profit from this switch. It's up to profiting application to
> provide the necessary wrapper around.
>> gzip --rsyncable, aloready implemented, ask Rusty Russell.
> The --rsyncable switch might yield the same result (I haven't
> checked it sofar) but will need some internal knowledge how to
> determine the old compression.
As far as I understand the patch it forces gzip to compress the binary
into chunks of 8K. So every 8K theres a break where rsync can try to
match blocks. It seems to help somehow, but I think it handles
movement of data in a file badly (like when a line is inserted).
> As I read my mail again the syntax for "compressing like" could
> be
> gzip --compress=foo bar
> where bar is compressed as foo was. Foo is of course a
> compressed file (how else could the compression be retrieved)
> while bar is not.
I wish it where that simple.
MfG
Goswin
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