Fix rpm/yum instead

Posted Aug 29, 2005 20:01 UTC (Mon) by proski (subscriber, #104)
Parent article: Fedora: RFC: X.Org X11 modularization project - rpm package driver naming

One of the benefits of the modularized X.Org X11R7, is that it makes it much easier for us to provide individual driver updates without having to release the entire 150Mb monolithic X release.

I believe the fix belongs elsewhere. There should be a way to update source packages without forcing the users to update all binary packages generated from them. Perhaps the simplest way would be to have checksums of all binary package contents and all metadata (except the revision number and perhaps changelog) available for download. This way, yum or apt-get could simply update the version, but not the contents, if they detect the same checksum.

More elaborate solution would be providing deltas between released binaries. This way, a one-line fix in the source could result in a relatively short download.