binary patches?

[Gary Kline]

On Wed, Mar 14, 2007 at 04:20:00PM +0000, Vince wrote:
> Gary Kline wrote:
> > 	Regarding most (or many) of the port changes--say, upgrading
> > 	foo-2.1.9_5 to foo-2.1.9_6, if  the upgrade could be done by
> > 	downloading a binary diff file, could the resulting
> > 	/usr/local/bin/foo-2.1.9_6 be achieved by downloading a 
> > 	relatively small binary patch?  Seems to me that smaller scale
> > 	upgrades could be done this way in preference to re-compiling
> > 	ports or downloading entire pacakes.  --Same would go for any
> > 	dependencies.
> > 
> > 	Why is this a bad idea!
> > 
> > 	gary
> portsnap works on this basis as does freebsd-update, see
> http://www.daemonology.net/freebsd-update/
> I can imagine it could get horribly complex, but using
> http://www.daemonology.net/bsdiff/ i guess its potentially possible.
> Colin Percival would be a good person to talk to if you're thinking of
> implementing this, since he wrote the tools referenced above.


	I'm just starting to use portsnap over cvsup ports*; looking
	for better docs on keeping (reasonably) current.  Thanks for
	the URL's.  --This could get severely complicated if there 
	were no ground rules.  OTOH, there's got to be a better way.
	--Well, hopefully!

	gary

> 
> 
> Vince

-- 
  Gary Kline  kline at thought.org   www.thought.org  Public Service Unix