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Date:      Thu, 4 Apr 2002 12:54:22 -0500 (EST)
From:      Mikhail Teterin <mi@aldan.algebra.com>
To:        jhb@FreeBSD.org
Cc:        imp@village.org, des@ofug.org, pst@pst.org, obrien@FreeBSD.org, cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org, cvs-all@FreeBSD.org, winter@jurai.net, jkh@winston.freebsd.org, rwatson@FreeBSD.org, anarcat@anarcat.dyndns.org
Subject:   Re: cvs commit: src/usr.sbin/sysinstall install.c installUpgrade
Message-ID:  <200204041754.g34HsNnF005867@aldan.algebra.com>
In-Reply-To: <XFMail.20020404093657.jhb@FreeBSD.org>

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On  4 Apr, John Baldwin wrote:
 
> I think a better comparison might be if you think about some of our
> current ports. We have things like vim and vim-lite. Imagine having a
> single vim package (so you don't have to duplicate all the share data)
> whose install script installs either the big vim binary or the smaller
> binary (both binaries are in the package, hence a "fat" package as I
> mentioned earlier) depending on if the system has X installed, user
> preference, etc. Since we would only need 1 copy of stuff that is now
> duplicated, we could actually end up with a net space gain as well as
> solving the problem of how to handle having 10 versions of a package
> for all the various WITH/WITHOUT combinations.

Perfect! Just be sure to use the best compression available for the
chunks...
 
>> A package is, typicly, downloaded or found on a CD -- in both cases
>> the file can be seeked around. IMHO, in this case space should be
>> given priority in the eternal "time vs. space" argument.

> In the case of a fat package you wouldn't actually download the parts
> of the package you didn't need if you got the package via a bitstream
> that you could seek on.

Well, when installation is from a CD or other such media, your argument
is lost -- I already have the seekable file. So, it seems, the new
design is addressing installations over the network.

My trouble is, when anything goes wrong during an install, it is
restarted, which means redownloading (at least parts of) the package
file, does it not? To avoid that with the present packages I'd tend to
download them and then install them -- hence, I have the seekable file
anyway, and can redo the installations later on this machine or others
without redownloading. In other words, I'll have the seek-able file
anyway...

What's left are the people, who like to install directly from the
network and don't mind redownloading in case of a failure. My
guesstimate is those are not big in number and mostly don't care for the
method chosen one way or the other...

>> And I suspect, those who disagree are simply blinded by their
>> blazingly fast connections and fat disks. :-)

> No, the fact is that we have thought about some of the problems the
> current scheme doesn't address and which you haven't apparently
> thought about how to address either.

Mmm, sounds familiar :( Can you explain, what those are, or point me to
the mail archive, where this was discussed?

	-mi


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