> > what extra work would that be, and if there is extra work, could you explain > > why this would be a problem? > > Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding of how pull works is > that it pulls files in their entirety (IOW: cp /n/sources/... /) > which means that shared blocks get copied as many times as there > are files sharing them.
i would be very suprised if a single copy of sources had many shared blocks. furthermore, as is made quite plain by upas, a change early in a file almost always changes every subsequent block in the file. there are some corner cases for block-sized or same sized adds/deletes. but nontheless, the vast majority of changes will change a good deal of of the blocks comprising the file. what leads you to beleve that that amount of sharing will be significant? - erik
