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Re: How to make Packages file 50% smaller



On Fri, Mar 02, 2001 at 08:00:55PM -0700, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> 
> On 3 Mar 2001, Brian May wrote:
> 
> > - rproxy: requires Packages uncompressed, and these may be removed
> > from the servers in the future, see #81657. Furthermore I have had
> > serious problems with current Debian versions of rproxy, see #83603.
> 
> rproxy, when it becomes well supported in apache, I think will be the
> prefered method to do this..
> 
> But yes, in general, omitting the long descriptions may indeed prove
> worthwhile..
> 
> An interesting observation would be that it is possible to associate
> descriptions and versions via a hash - the observation being that the
> description is largely invarient.


Ah, that's a very good point indeed...

I'd oppose losing descriptions (I use apt-cache search when offline[1], I 
imagine lots of other people do too).

However, descriptions do very rarely change.  Using the current (not
too sophisticated) scheme for downloading the Packages file, plus a
more sophisticated diff-based scheme to download the (hashed somehow)
descriptions would be brilliant.

Jules



[1] Actually, I've managed to get unmetered access at last, but that's 
only recent, and several years of expensive modem connections mean I
value the descriptions.



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