I tend to agree with Frank, unless someone can provide data on the impact on performance.
In any case, I think this is best handled on apt's side, either by fixing the issue or by introducing a debconf prompt. This is also not necessarily friendly for mirror operators. If the fact that there are currently 14 pdiff files kept on mirrors (at least ftp.d.o) for etch implies that mirrors always keep only 2 weeks of pdiffs, this means that the bandwidth consumption for normally-sized days (apparently 100/3 kB for etch, must be less for stable) for the maximum number of days average update by pdiffs is under 500 kB, as opposed to about 4 MB for a full Packages. This is under the eight of the data transfer. If the release-notes entry is kept, note that the text is misleading when stating that "There has been support added to <prgn>apt</prgn> to download only the difference between packages files." If I wouldn't know what pdiff means, I would interpret that as meaning that support was added for only getting .deb patches for upgrading...which would make me way too much happy to read until I'd realize what it actually means. The entry is also unclear on what is the problem described. Perhaps the following note would be better (if there is really need for a note, of course): <sect1 id="apt-pdiff"><heading>Slower updates of APT package index files</heading> <p> By default, the new <prgn>apt</prgn> uses a new way to update APT package index files (aka "apt-get update") which should use less bandwidth and be faster. Unfortunately, the opposite effect of making the updates slower can happen on systems with fast network connections and doing infrequent updates. One can force using the previous way to update by adding <tt>Acquire::Pdiffs "false";</tt> to <file>/etc/apt/apt.conf</file>. </p> </sect1> -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
