On Mon, Oct 20, 2003 at 05:53:36PM -0400, Alan Cox wrote:
> The problem is that RPM is a compressed format. Change one byte
in it and
> there are chances ALL the remainder of the file is different. One thing
gzip can be patched to avoid this. Debian have done so for apt/dpkg (Rusty
did a talk on this). It was tried ages ago but caused a problem that should
now be fixed.
Another big problem for the ftp sites is that rsync is relatively cpu/mem
intensive so 3000 parallel rsyncs isnt too cool
Which of course is trivially solved by reverse-rsync, reducing the whole
protocol to a get on the signature file followed by a bunch of range-gets
on the target file. This can be done with any static web server,
notably RHCA aka TUX. Instead of 10-50 rsync clients, one could have
5000 reverse-rsync clients.
Unfortunately, so we are told, this obvious change to the protocol is
covered by one or more silly patents.
Bill Rugolsky