So, we're up to 180MB in updates.

[ubuntu at rio.vg]

Ouattara Oumar Aziz wrote:
>> rpm has had this feature with delta rpms for years.  Left in the cache
>> on one of my machines, for instance, is a Firefox delta rpm that's only
>> 1.1 mb.
>>
> 
> Are you sure delta rpms system was functional ? I heard about this 
> project a year and half ago but never heard it became official.
> 

SuSE's been using it since 9.1 or 9.2... I just looked up one of my old
SuSE 9.2 systems, which happened to need to OpenOffice update in
question.  Check out these sizes:

2.6M OpenOffice_org-1.1.3-16.2_16.5.i586.delta.rpm
 48K OpenOffice_org-kde-1.1.3-16.2_16.5.i586.delta.rpm

Kinda beats the 180 meg download...

I haven't delved into it deeply.  It just works, so I never worried
about it.  As I understand it, the maintainer creates a new RPM with the
changes, and this RPM is compared with the old RPM to find out what is
changed, creating the delta rpm.  User installs the delta RPM as if it
were a normal upgrade.  There's no issue of inconsistency this way,
since the upgraded version claims ownership of all the old files...