Whatever happened to apt-sync?

[Felix Feyertag]

Evan wrote:
> IIRC, it was going to provide delta updates. Smaller server load, 
> smaller downloads, etc. It's a great idea, but seems to be dead. All of 
> the pages I can find that mention it are early 2007.
> 
> Is there any particular reason that it never went anywhere?
> 

In 2006 I participated in summer of code to implement this, the project 
website is:

https://launchpad.net/apt-sync

The code is functional and I'm using it successfully on my home computer 
(usually saving around 50-90% on minor updates and 30% on a 
dist-upgrade), however I do not have resources available to distribute 
aptsync files, so it's not possible for me to perform any wide-scale 
testing.

The issue is:

AptSync requires a repository of `.aptsync' files to be stored 
server-side. These .aptsync files store control information about each 
file in the actual Ubuntu repository.

To host such a repository, the following would be required:
  * Local access to a complete and up-to-date Ubuntu mirror
  * The ability to run `aptsyncmake' (Python) to construct .aptsync 
files for every file in the mirror
  * Webspace to store the repository. A rough estimate of space required 
is 50-100MB, and it need not be stored in the original repository tree 
(or even on the same server)

If anyone has the above resources and would be willing to help me get 
this project into swing, then I'd be happy to hear!

Alternatively, I've been toying with the idea of setting up a mechanism 
to automatically create and distribute aptsync files via peer-to-peer.


Felix