Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Free space wasting when handling binary files

[John Arbash Meinel]

Simon Geusebroek wrote:

> Thank you a lot for having considered my problem.
>
> I think that .deb files are already compressed as a .tar.gz archive,
> so I do not think that changing or improving compression system would
> (in my case) would change significantly the space required by the
> repository.
>
> The purpose of this repository is to handle revisions of a set of
> live-CDs intended to be used by students of different branches of my
> university, each one (computer science, chemistry, literary, etc., and
> maybe later other universities) having their own "edition" of our
> live-CD, including their own set of software.
>
> The repository will have to handle all the files (including all the
> .deb files, which needs about 3Go of data for each CD) needed to build
> a complete live-CD of any of our editions. I cannot multiply by two
> the space required for the repository, this would be too big.
>
> A solution could be to handle the .deb files "manually" outside of the
> repository, and to store in the repository only packages lists, but
> this solution may be not very clean, and I would like to be sure that
> there isn't any nicer way to tell Arch that each .deb files should be
> recorded only once (the previous version being always available in the
> repository…).

Well, in general with any *source* control management system
(cvs/svn/bk/etc) they are designed to handle source files, not the final
products. Most people don't include their final executables or the
compiled object files in the archive. (Some might do the executable, I
doubt anyone does object files).

> If someone has a better idea, I would be very grateful :),
> I thank you a lot again,
>
> Simon Geusebroek.
As I mentioned, there are potential proposals for handling your case.
You can search the mailing list archives. You might be able to convince
someone to implement it.
Here is a start for searching:
http://search.gmane.org/?query=xdelta&group=gmane.comp.version-control.arch.user

Unfortunately there has been a lot of discussion, so it might take a
little while to sort through.
Look for a proposal by Tom Lord (possibly as Thomas) where he proposes
to allow 2 sorts of tarballs into the archive. One which is "complete"
and another which is just the differences (such as generated by xdelta).
I don't remember the exact names of the files, or I would have given you
a more direct link.

You might also look at Tom's proposal that you actually keep the xdelta
format in the working directory, and only check in that portion.

And remember, the first time the file exists, it will only be entered 1
time, since the "previous" is Null.

John
=:->

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