No deltarpms in Fedora 11

[Posted May 4, 2009 by corbet]

As seen in passing on Paul Frields's weblog: it appears that the deltarpm feature is not going to make it into the imminent Fedora 11 release after all. There is apparently work to be done on Fedora's internal update systems which will not be completed in time. That's an unfortunate development, but, at least, Rawhide users are able to use this feature to reduce the pain of keeping up with the update stream.

Missing from conversion

Posted May 4, 2009 16:23 UTC (Mon) by wtogami (subscriber, #32325) [Link]

Missing from the conversation is that this can be fixed in the repo pushing mechanism sometime after F-11 is released.

No deltarpms in Fedora 11

Posted May 4, 2009 16:25 UTC (Mon) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link] (6 responses)

Well, they really should try to make it usable for dial-up users.

A big part of that is IMHO making the ridiculously large sqlite db that has to be downloaded with every change more modular. One for the base packages, that does not change, one for security updates and one for bug fixes/enhancemnts.

Just my .02 , though.

No deltarpms in Fedora 11

Posted May 4, 2009 16:31 UTC (Mon) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452) [Link]

A deltarepodata

No deltarpms in Fedora 11

Posted May 4, 2009 17:01 UTC (Mon) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (1 responses)

Uhm the sqlite dbs for the base repository shouldn't be changing for a fedora "release" like F10 or F11. I thought those were pretty much static mirror content. Rawhide being different as its not a release.

Now for updates..I'm not sure we can get more modular than that without impacting dependency resolution. The security updates and the bugfix/enhancement updates aren't built such that one group layers over the other. Security updates can and will depend on previous updates which were listed originally as enhancements and vice versa. Even if you are using yum-security plugin and use a local policy that only updates packages tagged as being security relevant at time of release...you will still pull in bugfix and/or enhancements to fill deps on occasion.

-jef

No deltarpms in Fedora 11

Posted May 4, 2009 20:55 UTC (Mon) by cyperpunks (subscriber, #39406) [Link]

> Now for updates..I'm not sure we can get more modular than that without
> impacting dependency resolution.

Yes, we can.

Consider late in Fedora 10, primary.sqlite.bz2 is 3.3MB. Now add a single package, the whole primary.sqlite.bz2 must be downloaded again with 99.8% identical content, while some tiny SQL statement would be enough to update the sqlite file to correct state. Should not be impossible to implement this idea. Any takers?

Re: No deltarpms in Fedora 11

Posted May 4, 2009 17:59 UTC (Mon) by nevyn (guest, #33129) [Link] (2 responses)

Release and updates are already separate. Separating security vs. other might be interesting, but would require a lot of work on the server side to make sure depsolving still worked. Another fix might be to turn down the firehose :).

Re: No deltarpms in Fedora 11

Posted May 4, 2009 19:36 UTC (Mon) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (1 responses)

The firehose....

There is a real tension between use cases when it comes to update policy. The current updates policy isn't perfect, but its rather simple in practise and it boils down to trusting the package maintainers to make their best judgement for the packages they maintain on behalf of their userbase in coordination with upstream project developers. Anecdotally, I've yet to run across user who wants to see less frequency in updates for the packages I maintain (and yes I know I have at least one other user beside myself for each of them :->).

Fedora's got something like 800+ active package maintainers if memory serves, more than half external to Red Hat. They each use their best judgement when it comes to bugfix and enhancement updates. Who's qualified to tell those maintainers they aren't making the best choices for best overall benefit to the userbase of those packages?

Adding complexity by restricting what maintainers are allowed to do with regard to official updates and building a house of cards of semi-official addon repositories for enhancements or bugfixes just makes everything more complex with little benefit to the core mission of Fedora.

-jef

Re: No deltarpms in Fedora 11

Posted May 4, 2009 20:20 UTC (Mon) by nevyn (guest, #33129) [Link]

Of course, it's the same with all distros. ... everyone wants their pet bugs/features fixed/added. They just don't want everyone else's as well :). "yum --security update" and "yum --bz 1234 update" are a god send from the point of view of applying just the fixes you want, but you still need to download all the metadata.

No deltarpms in Fedora 11

Posted May 4, 2009 16:25 UTC (Mon) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (4 responses)

That doesn't necessarily mean it wont be available as an addon option for people who want to use it. yum-presto is available in F10 right now as an optional yum plugin that needs a weebit of manual configuration. It uses a 3rd party repository run by a community member to hold the deltarpms. You'd have to check for sure, but I would imagine this will continue to be the case for F11.

-jef

No deltarpms in Fedora 11

Posted May 4, 2009 16:30 UTC (Mon) by stickster (guest, #40146) [Link] (3 responses)

In a fresh installation of Rawhide (pre-Fedora 11), I didn't need to do any twiddling other than installing yum-presto to make the new deltarpms work.

No deltarpms in Fedora 11

Posted May 4, 2009 16:45 UTC (Mon) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (2 responses)

Yep, my point is... if its not enabled in Fedora build system for F-11 package building, the 3rd party repository approach is still a fallback option. Its really up to Jon Dieter and Angel Marin(and other mirror providers) to decide if they want to generate and host an external F-11 repository for deltarpms until the last Fedora updates system integration issues are ironed out and the switch can be flipped for official Fedora F11 deltas.

And to be clear having it enabled in rawhide is a HUGE benefit to testers. With the amount of churn in rawhide on a daily basis, I can't always keep up on my relatively slow residential connection. Deltas will help a lot. I'll make it easier to keep a dedicated rawhide system running at home. Instead of just virtual systems running on iron at work.

-jef

No deltarpms in Fedora 11

Posted May 4, 2009 20:44 UTC (Mon) by cyperpunks (subscriber, #39406) [Link] (1 responses)

Could deltarpm be enabled for koji repos too? rawhide mirrors are too slow :-)

No deltarpms in Fedora 11

Posted May 5, 2009 4:57 UTC (Tue) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452) [Link]

What on earth makes you use the koji repositories? Please don't do that. Use Rawhide repositories that are distributed to mirrors.

No deltarpms in Fedora 11

Posted May 6, 2009 13:01 UTC (Wed) by pranith (subscriber, #53092) [Link] (1 responses)

What is the difference between Deb's and rpm's? Which is better? Synaptic or Yum? any links? references on lwn?

No deltarpms in Fedora 11

Posted May 6, 2009 14:20 UTC (Wed) by pranith (subscriber, #53092) [Link]

http://lwn.net/Articles/223173/

answering my own question :)