Tony Nelson wrote:
I think the powers that be would want to be shown exactly how much storage
and how many files would be required for all the pairs of package updates.
The number of updates for all pairs for a fast-moving frequently updated
package, e.g. the kernel and its ilk, might be large. Well, I only notice
5, but I may have missed some. I don't know how to find out all the
released updates.
n! n*(n-1)
d = C(n,2) = -------- = -------
2*(n-2)! 2
n is number of versions (original + updates)
d is number of deltas
recurrance: d(n+1) = d(n)+n
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
0 1 3 6 10 15 21 28 36 45 55 66 78 91 105
The way I see it, the function is more like d = n - 1Slightly simpler. For every version of a package, we would need to be able to update from any previous version, to the current version. I don't think it makes sense to be able to have deltas for updating to a non-current version, so i guess my suggestion to "keep all possible deltas" is inaccurate in this way. What I meant was "keep all possible deltas, allowing a user to update from any previous version to the current".
Michael Wiktowy had a perhaps even better suggestion elsewhere in this thread, that would further reduce the number of deltas kept, by dropping previous deltas (other that current minus one -> current and original -> current) after a period of time.
/Thomas