• MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    8 hours ago

    Download of 6GB is wild, is that re-downloading the entire package for each one that needs an update? Shouldn’t it be more efficient to download only the changes and patch the existing files?

    At this point it seems like my desktop Linux install needs as much space and bandwidth than windows does.

    • Olap@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      Patching means rebuilding. And packagers don’t really publish diffs. So it’s use all your bandwidth instead!

      • definitemaybe@lemmy.ca
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        7 hours ago

        Which is WAY more economical.

        Rebuilding packages takes a lot of compute. Downloading mostly requires just flashing some very small lights very quickly.

        • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de
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          5 hours ago

          If you have multiple computers, you can always set up a caching proxy so you only have to download the packages once.

          • SmoochyPit@lemmy.ca
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            10 minutes ago

            That reminds me of Chaotic AUR, though it’s an online public repo. It automatically builds popular AUR packages and lets you download the binaries.

            It sometimes builds against outdated libraries/dependencies though, so for pre-release software I’ve sometimes had to download and compile it locally still. Also you can’t make any patches or move to an old commit, like you can with normal AUR packages.

            I’ve found it’s better to use Arch Linux’s official packages when I can, though, since they always publish binaries built with the same latest-release dependencies. I haven’t had dependency version issues with that, as long as I’ve avoided partial upgrades.