Re: [PATCH] optional use "gzip --rsyncable" for bzImage

[Alistair John Strachan <s0348365@sms.ed.ac.uk>]

On Thursday 17 November 2005 01:54, Andrew Morton wrote:
> "Ph. Marek" <philipp.marek@bmlv.gv.at> wrote:
> >  As (at least in debian) gzip has the "--rsyncable" parameter included,
> >  I'd like to suggest this patch to (configurable) use this for bzImage
> > creation.
>
> I'd doubt if this works with a compressed a.out.  Most changes one would
> make to a kernel at the source level will cause changes all over the
> generated binary, so rsync will send the whole compressed file anyway.
>
> For example, a few-byte change in size of a function will cause a huge
> number of `call xxxxxxxx' opcodes to turn into `call xxxxxxxx+N'.
>
> So I'll need some convincing.  But even if convinced, this seems like an
> exceedingly obscure thing that not many people would be interested in.

Sounds like a patch for the debian kernel team, since GNU's latest alpha gzip 
version doesn't support --rsyncable.

[alistair] 00:34 [~] gzip --rsyncable
gzip: unrecognized option `--rsyncable'
gzip 1.3.5

-- 
Cheers,
Alistair.

'No sense being pessimistic, it probably wouldn't work anyway.'
Third year Computer Science undergraduate.
1F2 55 South Clerk Street, Edinburgh, UK.