Re: binary patch
On Wed, Nov 05, 2003 at 09:52:53PM +0000, Anthraxz __ wrote:
> When doing a package upgrade, I wondy if it should be possible to
> implement a mecanism for patching binaries instead of replacing the new
> one ? This could be usefull for use on a slow network connection.
This would require calculating large numbers of these patches for updates
from prior versions, storing them for public access, and developing tools to
make use of them. In the end, we would still need .debs for new installs,
and would also need to provide the packaging metadata separately, so this
method could not supersede the old, and the benefits would not seem to
justify the effort.
It has been suggested many times in the past to apply a similar idea to the
.debs themselves, rather than their contents. This has about half the
problems of patching at the file level, but still doesn't provide
replacement functionality, only an optimization for a particular case
(bandwidth-starved networks).
--
- mdz
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