Bug#901257: Please consider adopting zchunk for efficient updates

[Michael Stapelberg <stapelberg@debian.org>]

Source: apt
Severity: wishlist

I recently stumbled upon this blog post:
https://www.jdieter.net/posts/2018/05/31/what-is-zchunk/

The zchunk format, outlined in the post, is being introduced in Fedora for
efficient metadata transfer.

I can imagine (but haven’t verified it) that this format is more efficient and
flexible (suitable for both fast and slow internet connections/computers) than
our current pdiff approach.

Thanks for considering,

-- Package-specific info:

-- (no /etc/apt/preferences present) --


-- (no /etc/apt/preferences.d/* present) --


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-- (/etc/apt/sources.list.d/bazel.list present, but not submitted) --


-- (/etc/apt/sources.list.d/cc65.list present, but not submitted) --


-- (/etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list present, but not submitted) --


-- (/etc/apt/sources.list.d/i3-autobuild.list present, but not submitted) --


-- (/etc/apt/sources.list.d/keybase.list present, but not submitted) --


-- (/etc/apt/sources.list.d/vscode.list present, but not submitted) --


-- System Information:
Debian Release: buster/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable-debug'), (500, 'testing-debug'), (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386, armel, mipsel, arm64

Kernel: Linux 4.14.0-3-amd64 (SMP w/12 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

-- no debconf information