Re: Size matters. Debian binary package stats
On 12/18/05, Roberto Sanchez <roberto@familiasanchez.net> wrote:
> I think that the biggest problem is really updates. Packages like
> XFree86 (no X.org) and Openoffice.org are *huge*. A simple security
> update to one of those packages causes all subordinate binary packages
> to get a version bump. That means that if there was a bug in the
> XFree86 driver for video card foo and I use video card bar, I still get
> download a many dozens of MB update. IIRC, something similar caused a
> major strain on security.debian.org shortly after the Sarge release.
>
> If we focus our energy on anything to reduce bandwidth, it should be
> making apt/dpkg smart enough to only need to grab the single changed
> binary package out of the 50 produced by source package foo, or maybe to
> employ and rsync-like approach.
It would be nice to make it even smarter and grab only the files that
actually changed instead of the entire package.
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