On Sonntag 23 September 2007, Alessio 'mOLOk' Bolognino wrote: > On Sun 2007-09-23 00:41 , Kevin Bader wrote: > > 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? > > I think there is some kind of support of xdelta in makepkg (at least in > the one in development). > Checkout pacman-dev ml archives.
Yes, there is a bash script by Phraktured, but he's taking a different approach. With his method, the server has to supply the delta packages. I thought of not wasting any diskspace by keeping lots of version diffs in the repos. This could be implemented using the Xfer command in pacman.conf, like Phraktured did. I'm not an experienced programmer, but I'm running out of traffic volume these days so I'll start playing around with it ;-) kevin _______________________________________________ arch mailing list arch@archlinux.org http://archlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/arch
