Re: Solving the compression dilema when rsync-ing Debian versions
On Mon, Jan 08, 2001 at 05:28:56PM +0100, Otto Wyss wrote:
> >> 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
>
> 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.
This breaks, though, when foo and old-foo are being compressed on different
systems, by different people, etc., as is often the case with Debian packages.
Something like --rsyncable seems more generally applicable, though users
probably need to ensure that they use the same compression level both times.
(this should not be a problem for Debian, as this is all done by tools).
--
- mdz
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