Re: full file paths in the dependency metadata [was Re: Fedora 34 Change: DNF/RPM Copy on Write enablement for all variants (System-Wide Change)]

On Mon, Dec 21, 2020 at 07:14:08PM +0100, Marius Schwarz wrote: > delta rpms safe so much time in form of bandwidth on the client side. > If something really needs to change, it is the 50+ MB repo database > that gets downloaded. It takes ages on slow connections to download This needs a followup. I didn't push on it because the DNF team was super-busy with modularity, but if someone wants to pick this up, it'd be a significant improvement: https://pagure.io/packaging-committee/issue/714 In short, 95% of the dependency data is full filename paths. That's not hyperbole. It's literally 95% by count. Actually probably even more by _space_ since they tend to be long. Only a tiny fraction of packages use these at all, and almost all of the packages using file deps outside of /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, or /etc could use something else — and of the few using something else, many are actually doing so only in error. It remains convenient to be able to do dnf install /usr/share/fonts/jetbrains-mono-fonts/JetBrainsMono-Regular.ttf or whatever, but that seems like it could be covered by a DNF plugin. Previously, there was a chicken-and-egg scenario where the DNF folks didn't want to touch this while people were still making packages relying on this feature, but since 2018 that's a "SHOULD NOT" in the guidelines. So, I think there's room to move forward, should anyone like to take this on. https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/packaging-guidelines/#_file_and_dire...