Re: should we split up the Packages file in main (for woody)
On Sun, Feb 13, 2000 at 02:38:37PM -0700, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> > > ok, lets face it.. the packages file in slink is something like <500K
> > > (in i386) in potato its >800K.. i think it might be time to start
> > > splitting it up...
>
> > Lets wait for package pools, which should help with this as well.
>
> Why? It will make things worse because there will be more package+versions
> avaiable!
>
> I think the correct thing to do here is to have a pair of package files,
> 'Sunday' and 'today' - 'today' would contain anything new since 'sunday'
> and once a week or so 'sunday' would rebuild completely. If removals of
> versions were coordinated with the sunday roll over then this would work
> perfectly. That would require package pools (or a big dinstall overhall)
> Clients would just download both.
Let me suggest a more simple thing to do, again: add a .bz2 compressed copy
of the Packages file alongside of the others, and implement an option for
apt-get update to fetch that one.
All it takes is a few lines of code and a few extra seconds of execution
time on each dinstall run, and a not so large amount of lines of code in APT
to support it.
Simple statistics: file sizes of the gzipped file, and bzip2ed file are
853464 and 645918, respectively. This on current Packages file in woody i386
tree. Time of bzip2 execution is just over eleven (11.365) seconds.
Remember, extra 200kb over a modem is noticeable.
BTW same goes for the Sources file, file sizes 341722 (gz) and 262993 (bz2),
bzipping time 8.17s.
--
enJoy -*/\*- don't even try to pronounce my first name
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