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Fedora Might End Up Disabling Delta RPMs By Default

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  • Fedora Might End Up Disabling Delta RPMs By Default

    Phoronix: Fedora Might End Up Disabling Delta RPMs By Default

    Going back to 2009 with Fedora 11 has been delta RPM support to enable support with Yum for these packages that just contain the differences between one installed RPM version to the next version. With Fedora frequently pushing down new packages, delta RPMs have allowed those in bandwidth-constrained environments to more easily download updates since the file sizes of the deltas tend to be significantly smaller than full RPMs. Additionally, it's placed less of a burden on the Fedora infrastructure by having less disk space and bandwidth requirements. However, with DNF it looks like Fedora could revert to going back to full RPMs for distribution of updates...

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  • #2
    If it's still as slow as with yum please disable it by default.
    ## VGA ##
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    • #3
      Originally posted by darkbasic View Post
      If it's still as slow as with yum please disable it by default.
      No, fix it! This is a 2014 feature. Efficiency, please!

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      • #4
        What? Delta RPMs are great. Even on 5 year old hardware RPM reconstruction is fast enough. Think about people with slow internet access.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Pseus View Post
          What? Delta RPMs are great. Even on 5 year old hardware RPM reconstruction is fast enough. Think about people with slow internet access.
          I used to run Fedora on a Sandy 1.5GHz i3 laptop and RPM reconstruction took way more time than downloading the full RPMs on a 5mbps connection.

          I don't really understand RPM reconstruction... shouldn't these delta RPM just contain the modified files and information to be changed in the package manager about version and stuff?

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          • #6
            Delta RPM off by default but with easy changing

            I guess, like me, most users have a decent internet connection.
            There the updates take longer due to the rebuilding of the rpm files.

            So I would prefer to have delta rpm switched off.

            However, I do understand that there are some people, who like it on.
            It would therefore be great to have an simple GUI way (no command line, no file editing) to change it. So also inexperienced Linux users can change it easily.

            Just my two cents.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by andrebrait View Post
              I used to run Fedora on a Sandy 1.5GHz i3 laptop and RPM reconstruction took way more time than downloading the full RPMs on a 5mbps connection.
              I don't really understand RPM reconstruction... shouldn't these delta RPM just contain the modified files and information to be changed in the package manager about version and stuff?
              Would still have taken longer if you were using 1Mbits/s like I get here at college?
              The requirement for reconstruction probably exists because the package manager wants to have a complete form of the package in its cache ...

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              • #8
                Why not have a preference that toggles deltas (enabled by default), but have DNF at random track one RPM during any updates or install that exceeds 6 RPMs. DNF could then time the full download of that single random RPM and time the delta download / reconstruction to learn which option is more suitable after 10 random sets. If the full download is faster, DNF could disable deltas internally, but if a user doesn't want deltas, they can disable it which would also disable the smart stats.

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                • #9
                  I don't care for fredora, but...

                  I don't really care if fedora spends a lot of money on infrastructure or not considering that RedHat is pretty rich. So do whatever for with the defaults, I'll enable it myself.
                  However, please do not kill the feature! Smaller projects based on fedora/DNF have much smaller budgets and their survival may depend on these infrastructure cost-savings. So in my opinion, is not just about "how fast can I go" but more about being efficient.
                  I also would like to point out that the default number of delta-rpm reconstruction is 2 in parallel, which may explain some people's impression of poor performance on recent hardware. Personally, setting "deltarpm=-1" in /etc/yum.conf will have it autodetect your number of cores, and for me it makes it usually as fast or faster than dowloading the full packages.

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                  • #10
                    Some people can't imagine a world different of the one that they live in. There is a lot of places in the world, where the connections (broad band ) are unstable and far from the ideal.
                    Delta RPMs are a great feature and work fantastic!
                    Why they don't put a option in gnome-software to disable it instead to take a decision that affect negatively a lot of the user base?

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