RE: Request for comments on binary RPM patch packages

["Wichmann, Mats D" <mats d wichmann intel com>]

>We are desperately looking for an upgrade mechanism for OpenOffice.org 
>2.x that prevents users from downloading the whole beast again and 
>again. Therefor I would highly appreciate to have a patch or update 
>mechanism integrated in rpm. I really enjoy the way SuSE does it and 
>would like to see that mechanism becoming mainstream.

I was going to respond to the original by asking "what does suse
actually do" as they do have a patch mechanism.  It doesn't seem
to save a whole lot, I'm looking at 9.1 i586 updates and for the
main package, 58224kb while the patch package is 49728kb - and this 
is a minor update (build-number change, not minor version change).