FS#5549 - Zsync for downloading packages

Attached to Project: Pacman
Opened by Maxim Grechkin (ssmaxss) - Sunday, 08 October 2006, 11:38 GMT
Last edited by Roman Kyrylych (Romashka) - Wednesday, 08 November 2006, 23:23 GMT
Task Type Feature Request
Category
Status Closed
Assigned To Aaron Griffin (phrakture)
Architecture not specified
Severity Low
Priority Normal
Reported Version 0.7.2 Gimmick
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

As arch packages are plain tar.gz they can be easily distributed using zsync. Zsync allows to downloaded only changes to package instead of whole package (it can save up to 80% of download). Are there any projects to make pacman use zsync for downloading packages? To setup this on server side we need only to create small (several Kbytes) .zsync files for each tar.gz. On client side it could be done modifing fetch command for pacman. Is it interesting for anyone, and are there any chances that .zsync repository will be set up on arch mirror?
This task depends upon

Closed by  Aaron Griffin (phrakture)
Wednesday, 08 November 2006, 23:36 GMT
Reason for closing:  Deferred
Additional comments about closing:  See comment.
Comment by Roman Kyrylych (Romashka) - Wednesday, 08 November 2006, 23:23 GMT
I discovered zsync recently, and going to try it.
I'm sure this will not be implemented in near future, but maybe there will be such feature eventually.
Comment by Aaron Griffin (phrakture) - Wednesday, 08 November 2006, 23:36 GMT
I'm going to defer this. Currently there isn't a huge need to do this sort of delta download thing. This has come up numerous times in the past. It boils down to this point: Arch is made for "modern" hardware. This implies a decently fast connection. While it can be used on dial-up, it is a fading technology.
It may be plausible to support this on the server side, so that users can zsync repos or use the XferCommand themselves, but this will not be part of pacman.

Deferred until later.

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