Mail Archives: djgpp/2001/04/05/16:42:24
Hello.
I've updated the port of XDelta 1.1.1 to DJGPP. If you used the previous
release, PLEASE UPGRADE. This release fixes a bug that could cause data
loss. Several other minor bugfixes should make the port much more usable.
See below for a list of bugfixes. The DJGPP readme has also been updated
to include a little more information on XDelta, since the XDelta
documentation is not very helpful.
Here is a description of XDelta, from its 'readme' file:
"XDelta is a library interface and application program designed to compute
changes between files. These changes (deltas) are similar to the output
of the "diff" program in that they may be used to store and transmit only
the changes between files. However, unlike diff, the output of XDelta is
not expressed in a human-readable format--XDelta can also also apply these
deltas to a copy of the original file(s). XDelta uses a fast, linear
algorithm and performs well on both binary and text files. XDelta
typically outperforms GNU diff in both time and generated-delta-size, even
for plain text files. XDelta also includes a simple implementation of the
Rsync algorithm and several advanced features for implementing RCS-like
file-archival with."
XDelta is distributed under the GNU General Public License.
The port is available from the DJGPP archive on SimTel.NET:
ftp://ftp.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/gnu/djgpp/v2apps/xdlt111b.zip
ftp://ftp.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/gnu/djgpp/v2apps/xdlt111s.zip
These are binary and source distributions respectively. If you only want
to use XDelta, please download the binary distribution. If you would like
to rebuild XDelta, please download the source distribution. Minor changes
were required to port XDelta to DJGPP - the diffs are included in the
source distribution.
Bugs fixed since Release 1
--------------------------
* Temporary filenames are now generated to fit into the MS-DOS 8+3
filename
convention.
* Temporary files should now be removed, when XDelta has finised.
Previously, XDelta tried to remove them before they had been closed. On
MS-DOS this can cause filesystem corruption; on Windows this just leaves
the temporary files lying around.
* XDelta's buffers are now sized by default according to the amount of
free physical memory. It defaults to using 87.5% (7/8) of
the available memory.
Previously, XDelta would try to entire files into memory, to patch them.
This included decompressing gzip files. Hence, it was quite easy for
XDelta to exhaust available memory, resulting in XDelta crashing.
* The '-m' or '--maxmem' switches, which set the maximum memory usage
by XDelta, are now honoured. XDelta will use up to the specified size.
NB: XDelta will not check the amount specified - be careful. If you
give it too little memory, it will take a long time. If you give it
more memory than is actually available, it will crash.
Previously, XDelta would take the maximum of the specified size or 8MB.
Since XDelta may be running on computers with 8MB or less, this was
unsatisfactory.
To see XDelta's maximum memory usage, run in verbose mode, e.g.:
xdelta patch -V <patch> <fromfile> <tofile>
It will display a message like:
xdelta: using 4096 kilobytes of buffer space
* A couple of error messages were modified to include the file name, to
make
it clearer what the error is.
* The info manual is now omitted from the distribution, since it does not
contain any useful information about XDelta.
* A formatted man page is now included.
Thanks to Eli Zaretskii for his detailed bug reports, suggestions and
testing!
If you have any problems, suggestions, etc. about the port, please mail
me.
Bye,
--
Richard Dawe <richdawe AT bigfoot DOT com> http://www.bigfoot.com/~richdawe/
"The soul is the mirror of an indestructible universe."
--- Gottfried W. Leibniz
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