[Mldonkey-users] An idea for bandwith save

[Saiyine]

Hi!
 
 I'm a very satisfied user of your mldonkey program. I think it is one of the 
greatests peer to peer apps, and, without any doubt, the best for non-windows 
OSes.
 
 I write this email because I've seen lately that you have released for the 
public download four packages for your application:
 
 ~/mldonkey$ dir 
 3184973 mldonkey-2.5.9.tar.gz
 3190624 mldonkey-2.5.10.tar.gz
 3201826 mldonkey-2.5.11.tar.gz
 3206140 mldonkey-2-5-12.tar.gz
 
 As a user, I first downloaded the 2.5.9 package. Days after, 2.5.10. Then 
2.5.11. And, finally, the 2.5.12 one, about 14'5 megabytes in total.
 
 Then I thought "I'm sure the differencies between each release are pretty 
small, and is a waste to download so much redundant data". So I tried xdelta 
with them, with the next results:
 
 ~/mldonkey$ xdelta delta mldonkey-2.5.9.tar.gz mldonkey-2.5.10.tar.gz 
from.9.to.10.xdelta

 ~/mldonkey$ xdelta delta mldonkey-2.5.10.tar.gz mldonkey-2.5.11.tar.gz 
from.10.to.11.xdelta

 ~/mldonkey$ xdelta delta mldonkey-2.5.11.tar.gz mldonkey-2-5-12.tar.gz 
from.11.to.12.xdelta

 ~/mldonkey$ dir
 54766 from.9.to.10.xdelta
 56356 from.10.to.11.xdelta
 49020 from.11.to.12.xdelta
 3184973 mldonkey-2.5.9.tar.gz
 3190624 mldonkey-2.5.10.tar.gz
 3201826 mldonkey-2.5.11.tar.gz
 3206140 mldonkey-2-5-12.tar.gz
 
 That's it! xdelta is somewhat similar to the diff/patch duo, but lots better, 
being able to create patches between binary files. From output of "apt-cache 
show xdelta": Xdelta is an application program designed to compute changes 
between files. These changes (deltas) are similar to the output of the "diff" 
program in that they may be used to store and transmit only the changes 
between files. Wow, an apt-cach show is worth a thousand words, I couldn't 
explained it better in a million years. XD
 
 To recreate a file is really easy:
 
 

~/mldonkey$ xdelta patch from.9.to.10.xdelta mldonkey-2.5.9.tar.gz 
recreated.mldonkey-2.5.10.tar.gz
 
~/mldonkey$ dir
 3190624 mldonkey-2.5.10.tar.gz
 3188557 recreated.mldonkey-2.5.10.tar.gz
 
 Here you should be screaming "Hey! But look at the size of the files! You're 
WRONG!". There's an easy explanation: xdelta does transparent 
(de)compression, and probably my gzip libraries are different than yours... 
see:
 
 ~/mldonkey$ gunzip mldonkey-2.5.10.tar.gz 
 ~/mldonkey$ gunzip recreated.mldonkey-2.5.10.tar.gz 
 ~/mldonkey$ dir 
 13690880 mldonkey-2.5.10.tar 
 13690880 recreated.mldonkey-2.5.10.tar 
 ~/mldonkey$ md5sum *tar 
 b9641e82677307f3d568c5820d92c236 mldonkey-2.5.10.tar 
 b9641e82677307f3d568c5820d92c236 recreated.mldonkey-2.5.10.tar 
 
 So, here's my idea: what about releasing xdelta patches with every new 
mldonkey version as the kernel developers release text patches with every new 
kernel??? It would save _lots_ of bandwidth (just compare most of your users 
downloading 50 kilobytes instead of 3000!)
 
 Thanks a lot for reading the crazy ideas of your users, a uber-thanks for 
your awesome mldonkey!
 


-- 
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