Hide Forgot
When metadata expires, it is downloaded again and it is quite big amount of data. Usually something between 4-20 megabytes. It is worth to download only diff from our last downloaded version. This diff will be usually only few kilobytes. This will be similar work as DeltaRPM, but applicable only for meta informations (filelist.xml, primary.xml...). We can leverage work of Debian team, which done similar work for apt-get. See links: http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/439 IIRC the behaviour is, that there is diff to X latest metadata (I think X is 6 or somthing similar). So if you are within range of 0-X you will download those patches. If you have older metadata, you will download them whole as usually. This feature will however mean so add some support to createrepo or develop some tool to generate pdiff for those metadata.
we don't use the .xml files in fedora nor in rhel - we use the .sqlite databases. diffing those is significantly harder and as the debian article explained downloading 50 smaller files takes longer than 1 big file. We are working on a way to provide delta-able repodata but it won't be how debian is doing it.
> downloading 50 smaller files takes longer than 1 big file. It depends... For somebody yes, for others no. I definitely saw users stories where it will help. > it won't be how debian is doing it. That is for sure. I just stated it as example how others done it.
yum and related packages are no longer actively developed. They are being replaced with dnf, dnf-utils, etc. I'm closing this bug because it's most likely never going to be fixed. If you still consider your bug report important, reopen it, please.