Thoughts for assisting those with limited bandwidth

[Sam Tygier]

Mackenzie Morgan wrote:
> I would like to know how they handle situations where the person hasn't
> updated in 3 weeks and the package has been updated in the meantime.
> 
> Say, for example:
> -0ubuntu1 is currently installed
> -0ubuntu3 is available to install
> 
> Do they need to install -0ubuntu2 and THEN -0ubuntu3? 

if you have a simple name scheme then apt could look for
foo-0ubuntu3_upfrom-0ubuntu1
if its not found then apt falls back to using
foo-0ubuntu3

then it would be up to the repository admin to decide what packages were kept. it might make sense to have a diff against the previous version, and diff against the original release version (for people who just installed from CD)

looking at opensuse's repo
http://download.opensuse.org/pub/opensuse/update/11.0/rpm/x86_64/
it looks like they only have the delta to the previous version.

mac os system updates come it 2 versions. one that updates from the previous minor version (10.4.3 to 10.4.4) and one that will update from any previous (from any 10.4.x)

sam