Re: Updating RPMs using binary deltas (demo)

[Toshio <toshio tiki-lounge com>]

On Tue, 2004-01-27 at 07:13, Axel Thimm wrote:
> To get to the topic: There have been some comments on SuSE's way of
> doing this and why it is not accepted in rpm mainstream at the
> packaging list, which unfortunatley seems to have died a quite death
> in May:
> 
> http://mail.freestandards.org/pipermail/packaging/2003-March/000214.html

Axel, that's an informative link!  My reading of it is that jbj thinks
deltas of rpms belongs in the distribution rather than the package
manager :-)

He better defines my vague misgivings about the SuSE patch method and
presents rsync as a transport method as an alternative (which people
here have shot down as being too server intensive).

I think that the xdelta method bridges these two approaches.  It is done
at build time rather than at download so it doesn't bog down the
download server.  It creates a valid rpm which is then installed by the
package manager so there doesn't need to be a separate install path
through rpm.

Reasons it should be discussed on rpm-list:
* Rpm could be modified to delta and patch rpms rather than an external
tool

Reasons it should be discussed here:
* Whether it is used or not is ultimately a distribution policy
decision.
* Tools besides rpm could benefit from it (yum could download a delta if
the base package was available.  Would we be able to list this in the
common metadata format? etc.)

-Toshio
-- 
Toshio <toshio tiki-lounge com>