Re: git-style file storage for .deb

[Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>]

Hi,

On Mon, 2008-06-23 at 17:25:00 -0400, Phillip Susi wrote:
> Zenaan Harkness wrote:
> > I've had the thought a few times that it could make sense to store a
> > repo's files in a git hierarchy, rather than in a package pool.
> >
> > As in, raw files, with package description files which lookup the SHA
> > for each file in the package, when a package is installed.
>
> The package files are compressed tar archives, and because of this, they  
> are binary files which alter radically between versions, and thus, would  
> have horrible delta compression.

Probably what you are looking for instead is something like debdelta?

  <http://packages.debian.org/sid/debdelta>

> > My primary thought is that repository size might be drastically reduced.
> > Perhaps some md5sum numbers could be run to test this.
>
> It would not be reduced by much and would have a tremendous overhead to  
> access as a result, which the mirrors could never handle, and it would  
> break backwards compatibility since http or ftp could no longer be used  
> to fetch packages.

I think debdelta does not have those problems, but I've not used it
ever.

regards,
guillem