Developer Only Discussion List

["Eric D. Schabell M.Sc." <eschabell AT sourcemage.org>]

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Hello Joseph,

Thanks for the interest and taking time to make suggestions. We have been 
thinking along these lines and have recently started adding in rsync support 
for updating/downloading Grimoires. If this turns out to work nicely we will 
also extend it most likely to include the package management Sorcery base 
too.

I am not too sure if we will be doing it with the actual source as I don't 
see 
how you can use any such tool if the supporting author does not offer xdelta/
rsync/whatever support at the hosting location. 

We could ourselves arrange to maintain xdelta patches for everything, but 
that 
seems like another layer of abstraction (== more work) for our team.

Good thoughts though.... it will be passed on to the developers via our list 
and see what they think.

PS. SMGL team, 
This idea was posted to me personally this week, wanted to share it with you 
all on the lists.

Thanks again,
- -- 
/**
  * Eric D. Schabell M.Sc.
  *   Project Lead Source Mage GNU/Linux
  *
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On Thursday 27 November 2003 16:19, you wrote:
> Hello,
>       My name is Joseph, and I've recently become interested in the
> phenomena of source-based linux distributions.  After investigating Gentoo
> and the Sorceror variations I must say that its a brilliant idea.
>
> Perhaps you will find this interesting, no source-based linux distro does
> it yet to my knowledge.  Hereafter I'll use terminalogy intermixed between
> Gentoo and the Sorceror derivations.
>
> I've seen several people complain about Gentoo's portage program, with
> 5000 some packages, storing the full "grimoire" as it were, apparently
> takes serious space.  I suspect the vast majority of users will never use
> all of Gentoo's 5000 packages, so downloading and keeping all build
> information on their machines is a waste.  As well as using more than
> needed bandwidth when downloading.
>
> I propose an extension of the xdelta idea, where only the updated source
> files are downloaded instead of a full source tree.  What should happen is
> when a spell is cast, or Gentoo's emerge is used, the spell is downloaded
> if its not already present on the system, and then run.  The spell then
> stays on the system.  Updating a grimoire only updates spells already
> present on the system.  When a package is removed in finality, the spell
> is then removed in finality.  This way an initial install includes no
> spells at all, and accumulates spells on a as needed basis.
>
> Viewing which packages are available could be done by a web browser
> pointed at a convenient website containing descriptive information.
>
> Of course, the devil is in the details as they say, and much remains to be
> thought through.  However I believe an approach akin to that above would
> avoid the only real downside to having a large selection of packages
> available for a source-based distribution.
>
> I hope this idea proves useful in your goal to stengthen Source Mage
> GNU/Linux.
>
> Sincerely
>
> Joseph

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