Hi everybody, After downloading a 263.76MB update I wonder, if it would be possible to implement some kind of delta-packages. Most version updates include a patch which doesn't change every file in an archive but only a small amount of them. All the other files, like pictures or the like, are downloaded useless. Since only a few files change, the archive's changes are only on certain areas. I'd suggest creating a meta-file along with every package which includes a md5 checksum for every 2048 byte chunk of the tar.gz. Since most people don't clean the package cache after every upgrade, pacman can download the meta-files first and compare the chunk hashes with the local version. Then pacman downloads the different parts of the tar.gz archive only.
The benefit is lower bandwith consumption. Since the different versions are stored on the clients, no more disk space is used on the server. The only little drawback is the cpu time while pacman computes md5 hashes of the chunks. What do you think? kevin _______________________________________________ arch mailing list arch@archlinux.org http://archlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/arch
