This is probably science fiction from FC's perspective, but I came across this interesting paper when researching software updates via binary patches recently: http://www.cs.uu.nl/people/eelco/pubs/eupfcdm-cbse2005-final.pdf Abstract. Safe and efficient deployment of software components is an important aspect of CBSE. The Nix deployment system enables side-by-side deployment of different versions and variants of components, complete installation, safe upgrades, and safe uninstalls through garbage collection. It accomplishes this through a purely functional deployment model, meaning that the file system content of a component only depends on the inputs used to build it, and never changes afterwards. An apparent downside to this model is that upgrading "fundamental" components used as build inputs by many other components becomes expensive, since all of these must be rebuilt and redeployed. In this paper we show that binary patching between sets of components enables efficient deployment of upgrades in the purely functional model, transparently to users. Sequences of patches can be combined automatically to enable upgrading between arbitrary versions. The approach was empirically validated. On 6/2/05, Nicolas Mailhot <Nicolas.Mailhot@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Le jeudi 02 juin 2005 à 01:03 -0400, Konstantin Ryabitsev a écrit : > > > A super-package mechanism would help create a framework that would > > allow addressing the problems listed above. > > A super-package mechanism would add yet another layer of vendor mess > over the existing layers of vendor mess. > > Sometimes less is more. > > -- > Nicolas Mailhot > > > BodyID:264713259.2.n.logpart (stored separately) > > -- > fedora-devel-list mailing list > fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx > http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list > > -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
