xdelta files for security patches

[Peter Pentchev]

On Wed, May 14, 2003 at 09:07:24AM +0100, Colin Percival wrote:
> At 00:35 13/05/2003 +0100, I wrote:
> >  Using some form of binary diffs is on my todo list for FreeBSD Update 
> >(security/freebsd-update), but it's not a matter of critical 
> >importance.  Right now updating from 4.7-RELEASE to the latest binaries 
> >takes around 30 MB, depending upon which install set you chose (nocrypt, 
> >crypt, kerberos4, kerberos5); good binary diffs would probably reduce 
> >this to around 5 MB.
> >  That said, I'm not sure if I would choose xdelta.
> 
>   Of course, when I wrote this, I had no idea that I was about to write a 
> binary diff/patch utility in 12 hours.  In doing so, I've lost quite a bit 
> of respect for xdelta; ok, my code is about five times slower and has a 
> larger memory footprint, but it produces diffs 35% smaller and weighs in at 
> a massive 281 lines (in contrast to the thousands of lines of code in 
> xdelta).
>   I'll be adding this into FreeBSD Update in the near future.  If anyone 
> wants the code for other purposes, feel free to contact me.

When I read this thread yesterday, I was going to suggest taking a look
at the rsync code.  Still, it sounds like your code is much simpler than
the rsync algorithm described at http://rsync.samba.org/tech_report/.
This is probably a good thing :)

G'luck,
Peter

-- 
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