cvsup vs. portsnap (was Re: cvsup problem)

[Colin Percival]

Kirk Strauser wrote:
> On Wednesday 09 November 2005 12:44, Kent Stewart wrote:
>>If you aren't going to rebuild everything, every time you cvsup, don't do
>>it.
> 
> Out of curiosity, are 10 small cvsup sessions worse than 1 session with 10 
> times the changes?

Yes.  Each time you run CVSup, it transmits a list of all the files in the
tree; if your ports tree is almost up-to-date already, then this "overhead"
cost is in fact the largest contributor to the bandwidth used.  This problem
does not occur with portsnap to any significant extent; updating once an hour
uses less than 1% extra bandwidth compared to updating every day.

> Anyway, I've fallen in love with portsnap.  Is there any reason in the world 
> why a normal user (eg one that doesn't need to fetch a version of ports 
> from a specific date or tag) shouldn't completely switch to portsnap today?

The other common reason for being unable to use portsnap is if a user has made
their own personal changes to a port (e.g., an added patch).  Portsnap will
remove such changes the next time the port is updated, while cvs will attempt
to merge the modifications.

Colin Percival