Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 08:44:49 -0700 From: Julian Elischer <julian@elischer.org> To: Garrett Wollman <wollman@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu> Cc: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: asm_pci.h,v Holy cow! Message-ID: <39046BF1.1CFBAE39@elischer.org> References: <39041698.15FB7483@elischer.org> <Pine.BSF.4.21.0004242117060.4200-100000@alphplex.bde.org> <200004241536.LAA33905@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu>
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Garrett Wollman wrote: > > <<On Mon, 24 Apr 2000 21:30:01 +1000 (EST), Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au> said: > > > This seems to be inherent in the file format. Binary data is expanded > > by a factor of 4 due to encoding it as a C array. Even tiny changes > > in the data ripple through the array and give huge diffs. Uuencoding > > the data would only expand it by a factor of 1.4 although it would > > have the same problem with the diffs. > > I've been thinking about this recently myself. We want to maintain > the ability to examine historical versions of the code, but actual > diffs from one version to another are, in this context, meaningless. > > I'd like to suggest a new hierarchy /usr/firmware, which sits > along-side /usr/src and /usr/ports in our distribution mechanism, but > which does not use RCS files to store version information. Rather, > the version information is encoded in the pathname, and files are > stored and transferred as binary objects. It might look something > like this: > > /usr/firmware/ > gronk/ (this is the gronk driver) > 3.57.OA.bin (where 3.57.OA is vendor's version) > plugh/ > 42.69/ > model1.bin > model2.bin > model3.bin > > -GAWollman This seems well thought out and I certainly agree that we don't need DIFFs of firmware. I wonder if we can somehow "cheat time" and get that 13MB file out of the source tree and retro-actively tag the new scheme so that we don't have to carry it around forever :-) -- __--_|\ Julian Elischer / \ julian@elischer.org ( OZ ) World tour 2000 ---> X_.---._/ presently in: Perth v To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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