Patch updates for text-heavy packages in pacman

repsilat · 2009-11-28 03:28:22

I just updated qt-doc from 4.5.2 to 4.5.3, a download of 90.3MiB. The package for 4.5.2 (which I downloaded just a month earlier) was 90.1MiB. This is about the biggest package I get with any regularity, but I've been telling pacman to

--ignore qt-doc

because the download is a pain when I'm busy doing other things.

Out of curiosity, I extracted and diffed the two packages:

$ mkdir 4.5.2; tar -xzf qt-doc-4.5.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.gz -C4.5.2
$ mkdir 4.5.3; tar -xzf qt-doc-4.5.3-1-any.pkg.tar.gz -C4.5.3
$ diff -rN 4.5.2 4.5.3 | gzip > outfile.gz

The size of the resulting file was 1.3MiB. That is, pacman has me downloading almost 70 times as much data as I would be with the simplest of improvements.

User-modified files might pose a small problem, and you'd need a policy for which from/to diffs to provide, but this would be a big win for a small price even if only the [curr-1:curr] patch was available.

Obviously not a good idea for most things, but for source and documentation packages it's almost silly not to do it.

Allan · 2009-11-28 03:50:51

Package deltas are already implemented in pacman. However, no-one has patch the Arch repo maintenance scripts to use that yet.

repsilat · 2009-11-28 04:47:03

Argh, looks like I was googling for the wrong terms.

I guess it's not too surprising that the delay is on the packaging side of things. Do you know if it's being worked on, or if it's sitting on a to-do list somewhere waiting for a bored programmer to give it some time?

karol · 2009-11-28 05:56:18

> or if it's sitting on a to-do list somewhere waiting for a bored programmer to give it some time?
Do you know what does a bored dev do? He watches anime.
I understand you're pissed but being rude towards those wonderful unselfish godsend beings (aka the dev-team) or demanding things is frowned upon.

http://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/ … 14099.html

Ranguvar · 2009-11-28 06:05:40

karol wrote:

> or if it's sitting on a to-do list somewhere waiting for a bored programmer to give it some time?
Do you know what does a bored dev do? He watches anime.
I understand you're pissed but being rude towards those wonderful unselfish godsend beings (aka the dev-team) or demanding things is frowned upon.

I'm not a dev, but it didn't seem rude to me.
It's true, things happen when programmers get bored

repsilat · 2009-11-28 08:14:16

Terribly sorry if I caused offense (or sounded "pissed"). Perhaps I should be more explicit:

I'm a bored programmer. If some extra manpower will help things along (that is, if this is sitting on the back-burner because it's not interesting or important) I'm willing to spend some time in the trenches.

Edit: Looking around it seems folk are more stuck on how to best implement this, rather than on the implementation itself. Ho hum, hope it turns out well, but it doesn't really look like I can do much to help.

Last edited by repsilat (2009-12-01 11:14:40)

karol · 2009-11-28 08:20:06

@ repsilat
I don't know if it's the right place to post this, but here goes: will you marry me? ;-)

It looks like I misjudged you, but that was your first & second post so I thought "oh no, another guy who came to the forums to *demand* things". Sorry for that.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-11-28 03:28:22

Patch updates for text-heavy packages in pacman

#2 2009-11-28 03:50:51

Re: Patch updates for text-heavy packages in pacman

#3 2009-11-28 04:47:03

Re: Patch updates for text-heavy packages in pacman

#4 2009-11-28 05:56:18

Re: Patch updates for text-heavy packages in pacman

#5 2009-11-28 06:05:40

Re: Patch updates for text-heavy packages in pacman

#6 2009-11-28 08:14:16

Re: Patch updates for text-heavy packages in pacman

#7 2009-11-28 08:20:06

Re: Patch updates for text-heavy packages in pacman

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