Re: deb diff format (debiff) proposal
On Sun, Dec 03, 2000 at 10:34:15PM +0100 , Tim Jansen wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 03, 2000 at 02:24:01PM -0600, Adam Heath wrote:
> > All mirrors will still have to store the latest version of a deb. This is in
> > case the end machine has an older version of that package, that is out of
> > range of the .debiff.
> > They will also have to store M revisions(or N old days), and this could
> > quickly bloat.
> > Is there an limit as to how small the .debiff file needs to be, before storing
> > a new full .deb would be beneficial?
>
> Yes. You dont have to store the older debs, you only need the two last
> revisions to build a chain of diffs. This means that a user with an older version has
> to download one extra-diff for each revision that he skipped.
but you have to store the .diffs on the server and mirror it around the globe.
That's the problem with this.
> Old diffs are not beneficial when the sum of the size of all stored diffs is
> over a certain limit, say 75% of the latest deb. This would still almost double
> the needed storage, but it could also reduce the required bandwidth of the
> mirrors significantly.
of mirrors? How? Oh - you would write a mirroring utility, which whould mirror
the diff, then patch the archive. Cool. BTW how many sites would want to run
such script (in case they even know, there was going to be such a change in
the archive)?
Petr Cech
--
Debian GNU/Linux maintainer - www.debian.{org,cz}
cech@atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz
Obviously the only rational solution to your problem is suicide.
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