I'm thinking of an RPM enhancement (isn't everybody); but I don't want to re-invent the wheel. The intent is to minimize network-load when using RPM to update a remote system. I want to do this by optimizing transfer at a file-difference level, rather than package difference level. Say the system needing an update is 'client'; my package repository is 'server'; the package needing an update is 'gimp' (something nice and hefty; lots of files). client/gimp is at rev. 5; latest gimp on server is 9. Before transferring the gimp package to client, I would compare the md5sums of all gimp-5 files to the same gimp-9 files. If they are the same, I want to strip the unchanged files out of the RPM before transfer. When the package is installed on client, I want the RPM install to ignore the missing files, as long as the identical file is already on the system. Is it time to start hacking? Is there already a similar solution out there? Thanks for listening... -Aaron
