Re: Idea: rsync-based source format

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Joerg Jaspert writes ("Re: Idea: rsync-based source format"):
> This will make NEW a tad more complex: For most of us, NEW review
> consists of two shells, one of which runs the NEW tool, the other a tmux
> with an mc in it. Which allows *fast* and easy browsing of near any kind
> of archive (nested ones too), with the left window in mc presenting the
> directory tree[1], the right one a quickview of the file contents. I
> don't think an rsync batchfile is supported in mc (yet?) and it seems it
> can contain any kind of added files directly, so the happiness about
> such a format isn't all too high: It will make NEW processing of
> packages using it *WAY* more hassle and *WAY* slower.

Obviously we don't want that.

Let me try to understand the underlying use case so that we can
address it somehow.

Are you saying you want to review just the Debian delta ?  Or are you
trying to avoid extracting the source package ?  Or to put it another
way, I don't understand why you wouldn't dpkg-source -x and look at
the resulting tree in mc.

An rsync batchfile doesn't really contain "files" in that way; it
might contain binary deltas, etc.  So I don't think extending mc to
read rsync protocol streams is the right answer.  But I think if I
understand what you are trying to look at, we can probably make it
reasonably convenient.

Thanks,
Ian.