Ubuntu Snappy To Work On Deduplication Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ubuntu Snappy To Work On Deduplication Support

While Snappy packaging on Ubuntu is only a few months old, it's generating a lot of interest and will eventually replace .deb packages on Ubuntu. One of the interesting features to be worked on going forward for Snappy is deduplication support...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...-Deduplication

[vitalif]

And then eventually they'll find out they've reimplemented dependencies at the file level. Big deal...

[jo-erlend]

And then eventually they'll find out they've reimplemented dependencies at the file level. Big deal...

It is a big deal. Having virtual dependencies rather than hard ones, is kind of great, actually. Two copy-on-writed files are not co-dependent. So you download one app that requires a library, which is included in the snap. You download another app with the same dependency, and you don't download that lib because you already have it. If you have the snap on a USB stick or something, then you already have the deps, but you don't store them to disk or SSD because you already have it. You're right; that's how it works now. But then the author of one app uploads an update and the deps for that app changes. That doesn't affect the other app. That's _not_ how it works now.

In other words, you get the benefit of common dependencies, combined with the benefits of non-shared dependencies. If the second app later gets updated so the libs are again in sync, then you'll once again have only one lib.

Dedup and COW are not mundane technologies.

[GraysonPeddie]

Snappy is very interesting, but I will have to wait as it will be too early to try them out.