From owner-freebsd-current Mon Apr 24 8:47:34 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from urban.iinet.net.au (urban.iinet.net.au [203.59.24.231]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 04E9A37BA12 for ; Mon, 24 Apr 2000 08:47:29 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from julian@elischer.org) Received: from gothic.iinet.net.au (gothic.iinet.net.au [203.59.24.252]) by urban.iinet.net.au (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id XAA29443; Mon, 24 Apr 2000 23:47:25 +0800 Received: from jules.elischer.org (reggae-01-179.nv.iinet.net.au [203.59.62.179]) by gothic.iinet.net.au (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id XAA04926; Mon, 24 Apr 2000 23:47:22 +0800 Message-ID: <39046BF1.1CFBAE39@elischer.org> Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 08:44:49 -0700 From: Julian Elischer X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.04Gold (X11; I; FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT i386) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Garrett Wollman Cc: Bruce Evans , current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: asm_pci.h,v Holy cow! References: <39041698.15FB7483@elischer.org> <200004241536.LAA33905@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Garrett Wollman wrote: > > < said: > > > This seems to be inherent in the file format. Binary data is expanded > > by a factor of 4 due to encoding it as a C array. Even tiny changes > > in the data ripple through the array and give huge diffs. Uuencoding > > the data would only expand it by a factor of 1.4 although it would > > have the same problem with the diffs. > > I've been thinking about this recently myself. We want to maintain > the ability to examine historical versions of the code, but actual > diffs from one version to another are, in this context, meaningless. > > I'd like to suggest a new hierarchy /usr/firmware, which sits > along-side /usr/src and /usr/ports in our distribution mechanism, but > which does not use RCS files to store version information. Rather, > the version information is encoded in the pathname, and files are > stored and transferred as binary objects. It might look something > like this: > > /usr/firmware/ > gronk/ (this is the gronk driver) > 3.57.OA.bin (where 3.57.OA is vendor's version) > plugh/ > 42.69/ > model1.bin > model2.bin > model3.bin > > -GAWollman This seems well thought out and I certainly agree that we don't need DIFFs of firmware. I wonder if we can somehow "cheat time" and get that 13MB file out of the source tree and retro-actively tag the new scheme so that we don't have to carry it around forever :-) -- __--_|\ Julian Elischer / \ julian@elischer.org ( OZ ) World tour 2000 ---> X_.---._/ presently in: Perth v To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message