Windows version as patches

borsook · Post by **borsook** » March 15th, 2007, 9:35 pm

I'm sorry if the reasons I'm looking for were given before but - why are windows distributions, expecially of small change kind (like 1.2.3) distributed as patches? Even if it's too much trouble to make installer that'd do binary changes to the files why not just packing only the files that were change? I assume that lowering the size even by 50% would be welcome by people on dial-up.

Post by **torangan** » March 15th, 2007, 9:39 pm

The last tries to create binary diffs yielded results large enough to make them not interesting. I don't know wheter one between 1.2.2 and 1.2.3 would work though.

borsook · Post by **borsook** » March 15th, 2007, 9:46 pm

torangan wrote:The last tries to create binary diffs yielded results large enough to make them not interesting. I don't know wheter one between 1.2.2 and 1.2.3 would work though.

I don't know what was the difference specifically, but as a person who was for many a year on dial-up I gotta say that even 5-10 mb is a great difference (esp if you, like many of my kinsmen pay for each minute of connection)

Post by **ivanovic** » March 15th, 2007, 10:03 pm

When we last tried it the diff always had about 50MB. Compared to the 60MB for a complete download it really looks like it is not worth the efford. If you can create nice and small patches, they are definatly welcome.

borsook · Post by **borsook** » March 15th, 2007, 11:37 pm

ivanovic wrote:When we last tried it the diff always had about 50MB. Compared to the 60MB for a complete download it really looks like it is not worth the efford. If you can create nice and small patches, they are definatly welcome.

I can create patches based on two sets of files (either with overriding those that differ completly or by creating small scripts that'll patch the others) but I've not got around to trying to compiling wesnoth yet, so can do it only based on pre-compiled versions (and not doing that on source code would be very time consuming because wesnoth has a lot of small files - so I'm afraid I might finish after the next version is ready

)... anyway comparing 1.2.2 to 1.3.1, both on windows, 1.2.2 has around ~5900 files, 1.3.1 ~6300, after quick binary comparison I see that ~4400 are identical. So it seems to me that even the installer that wouldn't use patches but just had new files inside should be significatly smaller...

Post by **Yogibear** » March 16th, 2007, 6:53 am

Creating patches makes most sense for the binary, i guess. So you don't have to mess with the source code, compiling and such.

Everything needed to run wesnoth is in the installation directory. A patch substituting those 2000 files that changed should be perfectly fine. I will consider providing such a delta installation. Of course, i wouldn't mind if someone else takes on this part, as my time is still the most limited resource *looks at borsook*

.

borsook · Post by **borsook** » March 16th, 2007, 1:32 pm

Yogi Bear wrote:Creating patches makes most sense for the binary, i guess. So you don't have to mess with the source code, compiling and such.

Everything needed to run wesnoth is in the installation directory. A patch substituting those 2000 files that changed should be perfectly fine. I will consider providing such a delta installation. Of course, i wouldn't mind if someone else takes on this part, as my time is still the most limited resource *looks at borsook* .

I'll give it a try during the weekend, though I am sure that any product of mine will be vastly infirior to yours

borsook · Post by **borsook** » March 16th, 2007, 11:00 pm

Ok, I did a 1.2.2 to 1.2.3 patch. It's 3.7 mb. Really. Trouble is that in order to make it I had to download 60 mb

It's to be found here(Hope I posted it in the right forum)

I'd be grateful if someone who has 1.2.2 test it and let me know. Also other comments, requests etc are highly welcome.

SaintDust · Post by **SaintDust** » March 19th, 2007, 6:41 am

borsook..you just saved me tons of time. I owe you my life.

Since i can not pay that i shall give you the *Wesnoth Person of the Year Award*

my hats off to you..
just hope someone does the 1.2.2 ------> 1.3.?
cause i been dieing to play that

borsook · Post by **borsook** » March 19th, 2007, 6:47 am

SaintDust wrote:borsook..you just saved me tons of time. I owe you my life.

Since i can not pay that i shall give you the *Wesnoth Person of the Year Award*

my hats off to you..
just hope someone does the 1.2.2 ------> 1.3.?
cause i been dieing to play that

Let me know first whether or not this one works all right (I did test it, but only on one PC, which seems not enough somehow to me). If it does I'll make a 1.3.1 patch for you (I'll try to make one that works from 1.2.x be 1.2.2 or 1.2.3 etc)

PS. Can you or someone else recommend where should I upload this stuff? I have a 10mb limit on the server I'm using now....

SaintDust · Post by **SaintDust** » March 19th, 2007, 7:22 am

it works fine..im playing it now

PS. Can you or someone else recommend where should I upload this stuff? I have a 10mb limit on the server I'm using now....

Ummm sourceforge seems to work fine. But i dont know the rules there.

borsook · Post by **borsook** » March 19th, 2007, 7:40 am

SaintDust wrote:it works fine..im playing it now
PS. Can you or someone else recommend where should I upload this stuff? I have a 10mb limit on the server I'm using now....
Ummm sourceforge seems to work fine. But i dont know the rules there.

If you could have a look at 1.2.3 changelog and try and check whether indeed all those changes appear in your patched version it'd be great.

As for sourceforge - yeah it works great but I don't think that I can just upload something in wesnoth project...

Post by **Zebulon** » March 19th, 2007, 2:53 pm

borsook wrote:PS. Can you or someone else recommend where should I upload this stuff? I have a 10mb limit on the server I'm using now....

You could upload them here.

borsook · Post by **borsook** » March 19th, 2007, 3:03 pm

Zebulon wrote:
borsook wrote:PS. Can you or someone else recommend where should I upload this stuff? I have a 10mb limit on the server I'm using now....
You could upload them here.

thanx it looks good.

BTW for all intersted in 1.2.x to 1.3.1 patch - it's gonna be around 20mb plus ~10mb with changed music (which can be skipped). Expect it to arrive later today after I test it a bit. I seriously don't know why the official wesnoth stance is that it's not worth doing patches because of small file difference... unless it's because of the compression used.

EDIT> I managed to limit the 1.2.2 to 1.3.1 patch to 11mb

Post by **Darth Fool** » March 19th, 2007, 4:30 pm

borsook wrote:
Zebulon wrote: You could upload them here.
thanx it looks good.

BTW for all intersted in 1.2.x to 1.3.1 patch - it's gonna be around 20mb plus ~10mb with changed music (which can be skipped). Expect it to arrive later today after I test it a bit. I seriously don't know why the official wesnoth stance is that it's not worth doing patches because of small file difference... unless it's because of the compression used.

It has to do with the fact that wesnoth is entirely done on a voluntary basis. Since almost all the developers use SVN, and thus already benefit from not needing to download the whole tree, there is little need for most developers to build a patch for their own benefit.

A quick search reveals that this has been discussed before:

http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/posting.ph ... e&p=221821
http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic. ... dows+patch

So, if there is anyone who wants to build patches and release them, they are free to do so. In fact, we welcome people contibuting in this fashion. It just doesn't seem to be as fun a way to contribute to most people, so there are not a lot of people seeking to take up the task.