On Mon, Jan 08, 2001 at 05:28:56PM +0100, Otto Wyss wrote: > >> So why not solve the compression problem at the root? Why not try to > >> change the compression in a way so it does produce a compressed > result > >> with the same (or similar) difference rate as the source? > > > >Are you going to hack at *every* different kind of file format that you > >might ever want to rsync, to make it rsync friendly? > > > No, I want rsync not even to be mentioned. All I want is something > similar to > > gzip --compress-like=old-foo foo > > where foo will be compressed as old-foo was or as aquivalent as > possible. Gzip does not need to know anything about foo except how it > was compressed. The switch "--compress-like" could be added to any > compression algorithmus (bzip?) as long as it's easy to retrieve the > compression scheme.
This breaks, though, when foo and old-foo are being compressed on different systems, by different people, etc., as is often the case with Debian packages. Something like --rsyncable seems more generally applicable, though users probably need to ensure that they use the same compression level both times. (this should not be a problem for Debian, as this is all done by tools). -- - mdz
