Hi!
(I think a nice efficient compromise method would be Patch-Step-Size: 8 8 4 4 4 4 2 2 1, which would only update a lg(diffs) each time you updated the packages file, and only require users to download and apply a maximum of lg(diffs) to get up to date)
Thank you, better pdiff handling is a great idea! I personally have pdiffs disabled everywhere with the current algorithm, simply because apt often can't finish updating in any reasonable time using pdiffs, and it also eats very much CPU during the update process. Maybe that's because 'ed' utility is slower than 'patch'? Or it isn't?
And also I have a question about the implementation - if the old patches (diffs) are merged, how does it rebuild patches after package updates?
-- With best regards, Vitaliy Filippov