apt-sync ( was: Changing dpkg-deb default compression from gzip to lzma for Hardy )

[Phillip Susi]

Aaron Whitehouse wrote:
> On 18/12/2007, Mario Vukelic <mario.vukelic at dantian.org> wrote:
>> A while ago I read about changing apt/dpkg to allow for the handling of
>> security updates through binary patches. Does anyone know what came out
>> of this?
> 
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/apt-sync

The wiki says this was part of the 2006 google summer of code.  Did this 
get done?  Also I have some questions about a few parts:

1)  Why bother using --rsyncable with gzip?  Zsync with look inside 
allows efficient rsync to be done on compressed data without giving up 
compression efficiency by restarting the compression stream every x bytes.

2)  Should we not fix apt and other tools to verify the checksums on the 
files contained in the package, rather than the package as a whole? 
That would eliminate the issues with reassembling a package that has a 
few bits different, but still contains the correct data.