Re: Debdiff project announcement.

[joost witteveen <joostje@cistron.nl>]

Je 2000/02/04(5)/ 0:02, Tom Rothamel montris sian geniecon skribante:
> This is just a message to announce that I am undertaking a project I
> call debdiff.



Hey, cool!

I've long thought that the diffs created by xdelta are way too big.
I have actually started writing a binary diff utility that created
diffs that were about 3 to 10 times smaller than xdelta (all compressed
sizes), but abandoned when I had less time, and the stuff became
more complicated.


But, I do have more time now (well, should have), and I did
actually plan to restart working on that diff tool.

Would my diff tool be of any help to you? I should be
able to send you sources in a couple of days, if you so desire.

Note: The `3 to 10 times smaller (compressed sizes)' means this:
  I diffed the uncompressed .ar file inside a .deb.
  the diffse created by xdelta are compressed by default, my
  utility didn't compress them by default. But I noticed that
  bzip2 was *much* more efficient compressing the delta's I
  created than gzip, so I made xdelta create uncompressed
  diffs, and then bzip2-ed both of our diff's. And with that
  I remember my diffs were at least 3 times smaller (maybe 10,
  don't remember any more).

Thanks,


-- 
joostje