Subject: Re: mozilla/firefox source diffs instead of full tarballs?
To: Jeremy C. Reed <reed@reedmedia.net>
From: Geert Hendrickx <geert.hendrickx@ua.ac.be>
List: tech-pkg
Date: 05/12/2005 18:52:18
On Thu, May 12, 2005 at 09:37:39AM -0700, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
> On Thu, 12 May 2005, Geert Hendrickx wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, May 12, 2005 at 12:08:45PM +0200, Geert Hendrickx wrote:
> > > I have a tip/request for the mozilla and firefox packages (and maybe
> > > other big packages with frequent but minor releases).
> > >
> > > Every Firefox security update makes me download another 31 MB tarball,
> > > which is probably mostly identical to the previous one.  Could the
> > > pkgsrc devs create a diff between e.g. 1.0.3 and 1.0.4, checksum it,
> > > and just add these incremental diffs to the package distinfo file?
> > > Like e.g. the Vim package works (but this is done by the Vim
> > > developers themselves).  This will save pkgsrc users some time and
> > > bandwidth.
> >
> > I have created such a diff between Firefox 1.0.3 and 1.0.4 sources.
> > It's rather large (6706 Kb), but the diff consists mostly of changed
> > version tags (like the many CVS/Tag files).  This of course compresses
> > very well: 591 Kb left with gzip and 396 Kb with bzip2.  The latter is
> > 1.2% the download size of the total 1.0.4 tarball (assuming you already
> > have 1.0.3 sources).
> >
> > The compressed diffs can be found in http://lori.mine.nu:5190/firefox/
> 
> I think this is a good idea -- can you please approach the mozilla/firefox
> developers themselves to ask them to provide this?

Ok, will do.  

But in the meantime, can this be implemented in pkgsrc?  It may also be
applicable to other big + often-releasing packages.  

GH

-- 
:wq