On Tue, 2005-03-22 at 07:15 +0000, Ricardo Correia wrote:
> Hi,
> Please read the following proposal, I think you'll be interested:
> 
> http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-2218914.html
> 
> If you could reply in the forum, it would be great :)

So ... 

zsync is basically rsync over http without a "server daemon".

To facilitate the file transfers the original poster wants to create a
ISO file from /usr/portage and sync to that.

A few problems:
- that .iso and the .zsync metadata need to be generated. More load on
master server
- isos don't allow easy access, e.g. writing a few bytes for a tricial
bugfix
- mkisofs might shuffle the data so that transferring one large file
might cause more traffic than rsync does now

I don't see the advantages over tar + binary diffs. 

Personally I like the idea of alternative synchronization mechanisms,
but rsync (sucky as it is) still seems to be the least sucky we have
found yet ;-)

Patrick