[wp-hackers] wordpress auto update

[Andrew Nacin]

On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 8:11 PM, Otto <otto at ottodestruct.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 10:13 AM, Eric Mann <eric at eam.me> wrote:
> > Actually, Firefox has quite a large footprint when it comes to
> downloading
> > updates.  But the way Chrome updates in the background is fantastic.
>  I've
> > always been a fan, and I love the idea of continuously keeping my website
> > up-to-date (which is why I run bleeding edge nightlies in production).
>
> If you've never read about it, it's pretty interesting how Chrome does
> that sort of thing. I knew they were sending diffs, but until recently
> I didn't know how little data they were actually sending.
>
> http://blog.chromium.org/2009/07/smaller-is-faster-and-safer-too.html
>
>
> http://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/software-updates-courgette


For in-branch partial build updates, we're sending full files, but now
they're trivially small. Updating from 3.1.2 to 3.1.3 required the download
of a 3.1 MB zip and the moving of more than 900 files. Under the partial
build scenario, that same update would have been 78kb and 10 files.

That's 2% of the size and 1% of the I/O. Smaller is faster, and safer too.