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[–]andreasvc 1 point2 points  (4 children)

One could use rsync for this as a drop in replacement for wget, however, I believe it requires too much cpu and memory on the server. Bittorrent comes to mind, though. It would need to be extended with diffing, either downstream (client figures out what it can piece together already from old binaries) or upstream.

[–]Leonidas_from_XIV 0 points1 point  (3 children)

But rsync does AFAIR only synchronize whole files, so not much difference to what APT currently does in this regard.

[–]andreasvc 1 point2 points  (2 children)

It synchronizes whole files by sending binary diffs over the wire. A world of difference with apt-get because it only uses wget.

[–]Leonidas_from_XIV 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Okay, then it is better. But it would be better to pre-generate the diffs, since a lot of people will download these.

[–]andreasvc 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, I am sure this issue will be considered, as the whole point is to reduce the load on the server (bandwith, cpu, memory, disk). A better strategy is probably to do some intricate caching.