
Chromium Software Updates: Courgette - nreece
http://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/software-updates-courgette
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smanek
I would be interested in hearing cperciva's take (since he's the author of
bsdiff ...)

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tsta
You can find his comment here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=706346>

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ableal
And, since then, a patent issue popped up; see
<http://lwn.net/Articles/359939/>

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there
_The small size in combination with Google Chrome's silent update means we can
update as often as necessary to keep users safe._

silent update? so there's no confirmation dialog or prompt before you start
automatically updating what many consider to be the most important piece of
software on their computer?

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xal
I actually think this is the way to go. Think about it: Chrome just emulates
the rest of it's own environment here. Web sites are updated all the time
without update dialogs, why should the browser be different?

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russss
I really wish Apple would take a leaf out of Google's book on this. I'm
getting quite fed up with 70MB+ updates twice a month.

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rbanffy
Unless you depend on Mac-only software, I strongly advise you to try a modern
Linux like Ubuntu or Fedora. You may encounter updates a couple times a month,
but updates this size are very rare and so is the need to reboot after them.

I know. I am a Linux fanboy.

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andyking
I've had two kernel updates (40+ MB downloads and a required reboot) in the
past month or so on the latest Ubuntu, but in general you're right, these
updates aren't usually this common.

OpenOffice updates seem to be the worst in Ubuntu; a few years ago, I remember
a 100+ MB update to remove a logo from the splash screen!

By the way, this is probably the wrong place but I _really_ don't like the new
way it notifies you of an update - instead of a small icon in the systray and
a notification, you now get update-manager appearing on top of whatever it is
you're doing. A backwards step.

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DrJokepu
At least on Fedora, if you use the binary NVIDIA driver, on kernel updates you
also have to make sure that you update your drivers to use the latest kernel
headers. I typically forget this step so after the reboot I'm greeted by the
console prompt. Recompile, reboot again. Annoys the hell out of me.

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russss
Ubuntu has DKMS which automates this whole process. You just get a pause on
bootup while it recompiles the driver.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Kernel_Module_Support>

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DrJokepu
Fedora also has DKMS according to this:
<https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/packages/name/dkms>

However the NVIDIA driver has its own installer and stuff so I don't think it
works nicely with DKMS. Probably that's why it's not working at all in this
case.

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russss
Works for me on Ubuntu - although I do install my nvidia drivers using Envy,
so maybe it's that.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Envy_(software)>

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sh1mmer
Am I the only person that that thinks the argument for security is pretty
flimsy? Does the size of the update really delay the rollout of patches that
much compared to: discovery, the reporting to the vendor, patching and
testing?

While I think this is good work by the Chromium team, I think they should just
talk about convenience.

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pohl
That depends: what is my bandwidth budget and how many users would I like to
be able to support? I think the answer to the latter is "all of them", and the
former is a big cost for a free product.

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ableal
There's also the _user's_ bandwidth budget - on mobile phones, outside the
U.S., entry-level data plans may have limits as low as 100 MB/month or 10
MB/day.

If the (silent) updates bust the user's budget, they're not going to be
appreciated ...

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listic
Wouldn't it be better if applications were distributed in source form?
Minimizing patches size would be trivial then.

I wonder why noone seems to have thought of it.

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djcapelis
Source is often larger and you need to keep around the base source to figure
out how to apply the diff and get a correct result.

What they're doing here is superior to source-based distribution if you care
about update size and ease.

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cloudhead
Google never fails to impress.

