Delta packages

[Baptiste Daroussin]

CCing colin because he has interest to that subject

On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 05:43:14AM -0400, Matthew Seaman wrote:
> On 13/05/2014 16:21, Sean Fagan wrote:
> > We have a strong desire to make delta packages -- that is, given
> > version A and version B of a package, to be able to download a
> > package that has only the changes between A and B.
> > 
> > I've written a little program to create this (it currently only has
> > the files that have changed, not binary diffs, although that would I
> > suppose be possible; just harder).
> > 
> > I can, I'm sure, come up with a way to manually extract and update
> > the packages databases; however, I'd prefer to do a lot of that in
> > the package code.  (Among other things, being able to specify what
> > the delta is from would be good; I couldn't see a way to add random
> > key/value pairs to the manifest using the pkg* routines, and while I
> > can add it to the +MANIFEST file I create, that doesn't actually do a
> > whole lot.)
> 
> Uhh... doesn't 'pkg annotate' provide what you need?  Although for a
> fully-fledged delta package we'd probably be thinking in terms of
> generating some sort of diff between old and new manifests.
> 
> > First question:  is anyone working on something like this already?
> 
> There has been some talk about it, but as far as I know no code has been
> produced in public.
> 
> Delta packages would be good for lots of reasons, but one really cool
> scenario is --
> 
>     * upgrade package foo-1.0.0 to foo-1.0.1
>     * automatically produces delta/foo-1.0.1-1.0.0.txz
>     * should there be problems with foo-1.0.1 can then rollback by
>     applying the delta package.
> 
> (of course, it's not going to be as easy as that -- dependencies will
> need simultaneous up/down- grade simultaneously
> 
> > Second question:  Any objections to it in principal?
> 
> On the contrary.  This would make a really great addition.  Please do
> send patches / pull requests.
> 
> 	Cheers,
> 
> 	Matthew
> 
> -- 
> Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.
> 
> PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey
> JID: matthew at infracaninophile.co.uk
> 

regards,
Bapt
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