[CentOS-devel] Delta RPMs disabled by default?

On Tue, Jul 8, 2014 at 7:34 AM, Chris St. Pierre
<chris.a.st.pierre at gmail.com> wrote:
> As I understand it, Anaconda installs from the newest available packages
> when doing the initial install.  So there's no value to having deltarpm

It does not. It installs from your designated installation media. One
can *add* update repositories, or third party repositories, in the
kickstart or manual configurations.

If one wishes to install the updates at kickstart time, it's a common
option to do a  "yum update" as a '%post" steep. But doing so at
system install time means that systems installed at slightly diffeent
times may have very different sets of packages, and creates stability
issues.

Mind you, the bandwidth saved by deltarpm is overwhelmed in most
environments by the churning updates and expirations of 'repodata',
which are a compelling reason to run a local mirror if possible. And
the deltarpm package updates are often much slower than simple RPM
installations, in my experience, even after the time for the download
is included.

> support available early on, since Anaconda won't do updates, it'll just
> install from the latest.  If this is a feature that's important to you, I'd
> suggest installing it in your kickstart, or immediately after install.  As
> long as it's in place before you run your first 'yum update,' you get the
> bandwidth gains.
>
> There are probably lots of small utilities that would be useful in a minimal
> install, but that way lies bloat.  I also assume we're tracking upstream's
> minimal install, so CentOS is rather limited in what it can add without
> diverging too far.

All true.