Re: [Gnu-arch-users] arch lkml

[Thomas Zander]

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On Wednesday 10 December 2003 18:41, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> Miles Bader <address@hidden> writes:
> > One thing _is_ clear: the current representation is a _huge_ win if
> > something goes wrong, because it doesn't use a big-binary-blob (or
> > multiple smaller-binary-blobs) every storage, everything is in clear
> > common formats.
>
> Hmm.  gzip tar files are binary blobs, just in a common format.

Which is the opposite of a binary blob; since its entirely based on 
open-and-well-accepted standards.

> As I understand the literature recent work on version control has
> used what is a variation on the gzip format for storing multiple
> versions.  The idea is you compress the first file like normal.
> But for the second and subsequent files you look back into your
> archive (which you are simply appending to) and use previous text
> for compression.  This makes both appends and random access fast
> and in addition this happens to work for random binary files.

Thats not entirely true; since this means you will need to seek back and 
forth in the big-binairy file you created.
Services like sftp or webdav don't always support that.  Plus it makes the 
download service a manitude more intelligent if you want to avoid 
downloading the whole file for a limited set of files/revisions.

- -- 
Thomas Zander
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