Re: Some little proposals...

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 09:23:05AM +0200 or thereabouts, Germano Rizzo wrote:
> 
> Hi!
>     I'm a linux user, and I'm very fond of GNOME... As many people, I guess,
> I "only" have a 56k modem, with a dialup connection that I pay... and not so
> cheap, in particular for a student. I'm disappointed with two details of the
> current GNOME distribution system, and IMHO they could be helped with small
> effort!

I know the feeling. Less than a year ago we went from 28.8k to cablemodem.
It would take many hours to download stuff. 

>     First, why not to use the bzip2 to compress the packages? It compress
> far better than gzip, even 700k less in some packages, and it's a standard
> just like gzip, nowadays... changing the "Source" field of the specfile

I can't answer this. Does bzip2 work on all the platforms GNOME gets
built on? If so, this is surely a reasonable idea. 

>     Second, the patch distribution system seems quite random... I mean,
> there are patches to pass from a version to another only for few programs,
> and they don't cover all the versions... I do know that not all the changes
> can be diff-ed, but IMHO with a little bit of attention when modifying the
> application, they could be considerably more...

Tell me about it. I used to download the diffs, patch, and regenerate
an rpm. But so -many- of them wouldn't patch. And I am not particularly
good with patch. Either it works, or I get an error I am not capable
of dealing with. It was faster in the end to grab the entire new package
than to get all the patches and attempt to apply them. I did try to tell
packagers when diffs were broken, but if I couldn't tell them -how-, this
didn't help much :) 

>     I don't write this with the intent to be pesky, but only because at the
> moment, it's impossible for me (and many other people, I guess) to take the
> pace of the GNOME project... I just can't download many megabites one day,
> and the following day discover that I have to download all over again... and
> this for many more than a couple packages!! I know that it is endemic in a
> project of this ambition, but I just wanted to suggest how an user's pain
> can be eased with a small effort... just my 2 cents! :)

I agree totally. For those with little bandwidth, the pace is just too
much to keep with the latest updates continually. And then you are told 
"this is fixed in latest version" :) My solution was to stick with fairly 
stable stuff, or to upgrade only the minimum stuff. I don't personally use 
gnome-pim, or gnumeric, or (whole pile of other stuff) so I didn't feel the 
need to keep on top of those; but I did use some other packages and kept
them more up to date.

I used to create a script of

ncftpget -F ftp://ftp.mirror.ac.uk/path/to/gnome-update-1.tar.gz
ncftpget -F ftp://ftp.mirror.ac.uk/path/to/gnome-update-2.tar.gz
ncftpget -F ftp://ftp.mirror.ac.uk/path/to/gnome-update-3.tar.gz
ncftpget -F ftp://ftp.mirror.ac.uk/path/to/gnome-update-4.tar.gz

And then use "at -f grablist 4am" to kick it off. By that time (GMT),
UK users were in bed, and US users were going to bed, and whilst the
script was going (and it took five hours to download October GNOME)
the US people went to sleep too :) 

It was the only way I knew to get the stuff :) 

Telsa