>>>>> "zhaoway" == zhaoway <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
zhaoway> This is only a small part of the whole story, IMHO. See zhaoway> my other email replying you. ;) >> Maybe there could be another version of Packages.gz without the >> extended descriptions -- I imagine they would take something >> like 33% of the Packages file, in line count at least. zhaoway> Exactly. DIFF or RSYNC method of APT (as Goswin pointed zhaoway> out), or just seperate Descriptions out (as I pointed out zhaoway> and you got it too), nearly 66% of the bits are zhaoway> saved. But this is only a hack, albeit efficient. At the risk of getting flamed, I investigated the possibility of writing an apt-get method to support rsync. I would use this to access an already existing private mirror, and not the main Debian archive. Hence the server load issue is not a problem. The only problem I have is downloading several megs of index files every time I want to install a new package (often under 100kb) from unstable, over a volume charged 28.8 kbps PPP link, using apt-get[1]. I think (if I understand correctly) that I found three problems with the design of apt-get: 1. It tries to down-load the compressed Packages file, and has no way to override it with the uncompressed file. I filed a bug report against apt-get on this, as I believe this will also be a problem with protocols like rproxy too. 2. apt-get tries to be smart and passes the method a destination file name that is only a temporary file, and not the final file. Hence, rsync cannot make a comparison between local and remote versions of the file. 3. Instead, rsync creates its own temporary file while downloading, so apt-get cannot display the progress of the download operation because as far as it is concerned the destination file is still empty. I think the only way to fix both 2 and 3 is to allow some coordination between apt-get and rsync where to put the temporary file and where to find the previous version of the file. Note: [1] Normally I try to find the files manually via lynx, but right at the moment this is rather difficult, as I seem to try numerous directories but not get the expected result. Some packages -- Brian May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>