[haiku] Re: Haiku Files - Binary Diffs
- From: Nick <tonestone57@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <haiku@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:22:34 -0600
> Thanks for doing the testing, that is good to know regarding the
> difference between bsdiff and xdelta.
Sure, I believe it offers a better alternative than downloading 160+
MB ISO image. You just get a patch file, less than 5MB & you
get to update to the latest ISO image by applying it.
> While offering binary diffs for updated alpha images might be nice as
> a temporary measure, I think long term we will want a more
> fine-grained updating system that can update individual components
> inside a running Haiku system. This will likely use binary diffing too
> (and maybe Google Chrome's Courgette system.)
I doubt package management will use binary diffing. My reasoning
( maybe I'm wrong? ).
For binary diffing you need to apply to the same reference binary
file. For instance, say you release Web browser & you have Alpha1,
Alpha1.5, Beta1 & you just released Beta2 and there are users out
there with all of these versions of Web browser.
You'd need binary diffs for Alpha1->Beta2, Alpha1.5->Beta2,
Beta1->Beta2. 3 binary diffs to get users to Beta2. Imagine
what would happen if you have even more versions of your
Web Browser out there, ie: 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, etc..
Now imagine doing this for Haiku with thousands of files &
different revisions and you'll see what the problem is. It is much
easier & better to do it to one big file ( ISO ) instead.
It would get very complicated. Easier to do it on one large
file or on application packages but not ( for individual files )
system wide.
> I was planning on experimenting some with binary updating for the new
> web browser, but I'm not even close to that point yet.
OK, will be cool to see what you come up with.
> I think it would be reasonable to start planning a Haiku update system
> to be released with alpha 2. But obviously that is up to the rest of
> the Haiku developers, though if I get something working with the
> browser it would make things easier.
I'm certain they'll discuss package management @ BeGeistert 021.
I noticed (Google's) Courgette too. Problem is when you try to get very
compact binary diffs you face one or more of the following:
1) huge memory requirements
2) more CPU time ( slow )
3) greater complexity
There are other binary diff programs out there that can be compared
too if someone else wants to do it. I would be curious to see what else
works with big, Haiku ISOs ( & even small ISOs ), the CPU time &
memory required - just for comparison.
Regards,
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