Re: [gentoo-dev] portage question

[Evan Read <eread@freeshell.org>]

On Wed, Oct 02, 2002 at 09:22:06AM +0200, Henti Smith wrote: > On Tue, 01
Oct 2002 23:09:14 +0000 > Leon Chiver <leon@level7.ro> wrote: > > > I've
installed gentoo and I must say that I'm very pleased whith it.  > >
Marvelous job. > > But there's still one feature I'm missing and which
regards the update > > procedure: wouldn't it be nice if we could upgrade
from one version of a > > package to another by only downloading the diff?
A few days before I've > > installed mozilla-1.0, today I emerged 1.0.1.
But I had to download the > > entire 1.0.1 archive, instead of only a diff
file. For people with a > > limited internet access this would be a really
great feature. > > Does anyone know, is such an improvement planned? > > I
had a look on the bugzilla page and did a few searches .. didn't se
anything that pertains to this, but I have to admit ..  > In the image of
gentoo this should have been in portage already.  > > being able to update
packages just with patches would be really nice for us low bandwidth users
..  >

There was a thread about why the kernel stuff isn't done that way.  It was 
discussed that it is very hard to allow for people that sit at very 
different kernel versions to be able to upgrade with one ebuild.  Yes, one 
can do all the checks to see what is needed to go from 2.4.x to 2.4.19 (or 
even 2.2.x to 2.4.19) and just fetch the right diff, but that is much more 
difficult than "get latest source, unpack into /usr/src and patch".

There is nothing stopping anyone from creating thes ebuild themselves and 
posting them on the web say "diff2.4.16to2.4.19.ebuild" and giving people 
the ability to use them , even if they don't get commited.

Back to Mozilla, mozilla is a less complicated beast.  If someone has a 
diff, then numberous ebuilds can be created to cover all the bases, or 
build the logic into one ebuild.  Maybe email the maintainer to ask "why 
not" and if he says "because", then write one yourself ;)

-- 
Evan Read
http://eread.freeshell.org

"The future comes 60 minutes an hour no matter who you are or what you 
do." 
	The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis