7 ms·

It's crazy that even dot releases are a full 3.6G download

by i2shar 6y ago

ajconway 6y ago
If I'm not mistaken, the amount you download when updating from a previous version is significantly less than a full installer image.
lostmsu 6y ago
Still far from Microsoft Visual Studio update, which renamed VSO into Azure DevOps, and required 1.2GB download basically just for that.
TheChaplain 6y ago
Binary patching hasn't been a thing for years unfortunately. Even bigger wreck on consoles these days, where an update can be 50+ gigabytes...
- Hamuko 6y ago
  Where are you getting 50+ GB console updates?
  - Operyl 6y ago
    I think they’re referring to games. A good example? CoD Modern Warfare (the recent one) _always_ seems to have 50GB updates. It is rather annoying, even with fast internet.
    - Hamuko 6y ago
      I can't remember a time I've downloaded a patch that is as big as the base game on a console. Granted, most of the games I play are on physical copies.
    - raihansaputra 6y ago
      Usually it's around 30GB. I play on PC and have to remind all of my party to update the night before. Each update seems to only come with small changes, and the total game size only increases by ~5GB usually. So they're either recompressing previous assets or changing stuff that can't be patched in along with new content. These updates usually happens every week/every other week. It's insane. I think all of the previous CoD:MW titles combined isn't as big as this one alone.
      - prputnam 6y ago
        My girlfriend and I play with our old roommates most evenings as of late - we've gotten in the habit of turning on my gaming rig and her PS4 around lunch to suss out any updates. We are lucky to have symmetrical gig internet, but even with an Ethernet cable connected the PS4 download speeds abysmal. Those COD patches really are monstrous.
        raihansaputra 6y ago
        Newer games in general have these humongous updates. I’m somehow pleasantly surprised when checking that GTA V total size is 90GB all in. An open world online game with endless possibilities. Fortnite, a way simpler game, is ~70GB with monstrous patches too. I really wonder what is in those files..
    - kjakm 6y ago
      Modern Warfare is a nightmare. 50-80GB updates every month and no online play until you update. That can be over 12 hours for me. It's one thing I've noticed since getting a console recently after not having one since the PS2 era. Huge updates constantly. Even when you buy a disc they have to download a bunch of stuff. Such a horrible user experience.
    - tibbydudeza 6y ago
      Probably how the stuff is packaged for consoles where content is continuously streamed to make up for the limited memory on consoles and anemic CPU's so texture maps , world data and game logic are interleaved. Patching all of that is difficult to it is probably easier to replace the content streams in one go.
      - Operyl 6y ago
        This is the case for both PC and consoles for this game :).
- hawski 6y ago
  If they would only use something like rsync or ostree at the least. But if the biggest files are archives it would require recompression. If it's more like an uncompressed tar archive then it should be easier, but still it would require either a clever algorithm or the format support by the algorithm.
- tomxor 6y ago
  > Binary patching hasn't been a thing for years unfortunately. True, and it's fair to say binary diffs aren't worth the complexities they introduce anymore, yet the concept of only pulling updates for individual packages has been a thing for over two decades in the *nix world. It seems like a poor choice for Apple to not bother making updates more discerning while also removing binary diffs... certainly a shitty move for anyone without a 99th percentile internet connection - then again everyone outside of that group probably can't afford Apple products anyway. For some perspective: 3.6 GiB is significantly larger than the downloads required to install my entire OS from scratch, and 36 times larger than my average weekly run of apt. From my now outdated experience on Mac OS i'm aware they do divide things into installer packages with some kind of receipt for version info that software update probably probes. So I guess it must be that these packages are not very granular.
  - caribousoup 6y ago
    Definitely frustrating for anyone not on broadband. There are more of us than you'd think. It's a giant 'fuck you' from the software industry, real world efficiency be damned.
    - vadarvariu 6y ago
      Totally agree. Updated to Catalina recently and on top of the huge patch size the update client doesn't seem to have any retry mechanism built in. Connection drops 9.9G into a 10G download? Too bad, start over. Just a simple wget -c would do. Incredible.
      - caribousoup 6y ago
        I wonder how many real word resources are wasted over this. It costs money to serve that data, it costs money to download that data, it congests the network wherever that data is being routed, it consumes energy however that is generated in the region. Windows Update does this too, if the transfer fails it starts from zero. Multiply this by... what, a couple million times for each update? I assume they run the numbers and it's cheaper to just dump all the data and run things inefficiently, compared to having teams deploy it correctly. It's just a waste though, and it pisses off your customers.
- ascagnel_ 6y ago
  Xbox 360 patches were handled differently -- only the game binary would be included in the initial patch; any content updates were released as free DLC add-on packs (or, if a game was releasing new paid DLC, they'd require a new add-on pack that included some subset of the new content for free). PS4 updates are notably bad, since they do a full copy & write (vs write-in-place) on patches. It's good if there's an issue on updating, since you can delete the partially-updated copy and start over, but bad because it requires more than 2x the disk space for the patch.
  - modzu 6y ago
    i visited my brother last night and he threw on the xbox. it forced an update. then it downloaded almost a gig and threw an error. then it started again and installed and rebooted and installed.. about half an hour later we'd moved onto other things and never even played it. answered my question about whether or not i wanted one though! lol
- tibbydudeza 6y ago
  Chrome uses binary patching mechanism rather reliably for millions of users.
- ttfkam 6y ago
  Yes it has, just not for Apple. Chrome/Chromium do Courgette (binary diff) updates to great effect. Those 8GB Xcode minor release monsters could definitely use some binary diff love. https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/software-updates-courgette https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/softwar...
de_watcher 6y ago
Oh boy, you're spoiled by Linux.
MaysonL 6y ago
2.98 for me…
jiripospisil 6y ago
I "asked HN" about this recently but unfortunately it has not received much attention. Maybe now there are people around who know what exactly happens during an update? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22688198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22688198
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Not an expert in how the update process works, but the update certainly contains all the changed files, of which there is usually a lot. (I would think this is every project that has had a source code change internally…) There are number of shared- and kext-cache related things that also run afterwards.
tannhaeuser 6y ago
Btw does anyone know how to test-install a newer OS other than with Mac OS' upgrade option burning through 6gb+ downloads supposedly also replacing the OS rather than installing it onto an external disk? I've got an unused old mini that's still on the OS it came with - way out of date. I even went to an Apple dealer to get Mojave onto an SSD drive last year, only to find out that the mini needs a firmware update for APFS that only comes with Mojave/Catalina, but I can't find a download option for only the firmware update so that I could boot from an external AFPS disk.
- snazz 6y ago
  Can you not just back up the current SSD and repeatedly OTA it to the last supported version? That would be my solution.
  - tannhaeuser 6y ago
    Exactly what I had hoped to avoid. I only keep the Mac for cross-platform builds, site testing on Safari, and for hypothetically being able to open old 3D assets, but the old apps almost certainly won't work on newer Mac OS anyway.
caribousoup 6y ago
Right... the earlier point releases were 100-500 MB. Full history of OS X update sizes: https://robservatory.com/a-full-history-of-macos-os-x-release-dates-and-rates/ https://robservatory.com/a-full-history-of-macos-os-x-releas... It seemed to start getting out of hand around Yosemite 2014.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  Yosemite is where OS X started getting out of hand in general, though it took a while for the papercuts to add up.

It's crazy that even dot releases are a full 3.6G download

by i2shar 6y ago

It's crazy that even dot releases are a full 3.6G download

If I'm not mistaken, the amount you download when updating from a previous version is significantly less than a full installer image.

lostmsu 6y ago

Still far from Microsoft Visual Studio update, which renamed VSO into Azure DevOps, and required 1.2GB download basically just for that.

TheChaplain 6y ago

Binary patching hasn't been a thing for years unfortunately. Even bigger wreck on consoles these days, where an update can be 50+ gigabytes...

Hamuko 6y ago
Where are you getting 50+ GB console updates?
- Operyl 6y ago
  I think they’re referring to games. A good example? CoD Modern Warfare (the recent one) _always_ seems to have 50GB updates. It is rather annoying, even with fast internet.
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    I can't remember a time I've downloaded a patch that is as big as the base game on a console. Granted, most of the games I play are on physical copies.
  - raihansaputra 6y ago
    Usually it's around 30GB. I play on PC and have to remind all of my party to update the night before. Each update seems to only come with small changes, and the total game size only increases by ~5GB usually. So they're either recompressing previous assets or changing stuff that can't be patched in along with new content. These updates usually happens every week/every other week. It's insane. I think all of the previous CoD:MW titles combined isn't as big as this one alone.
    - prputnam 6y ago
      My girlfriend and I play with our old roommates most evenings as of late - we've gotten in the habit of turning on my gaming rig and her PS4 around lunch to suss out any updates. We are lucky to have symmetrical gig internet, but even with an Ethernet cable connected the PS4 download speeds abysmal. Those COD patches really are monstrous.
      - raihansaputra 6y ago
        Newer games in general have these humongous updates. I’m somehow pleasantly surprised when checking that GTA V total size is 90GB all in. An open world online game with endless possibilities. Fortnite, a way simpler game, is ~70GB with monstrous patches too. I really wonder what is in those files..
  - kjakm 6y ago
    Modern Warfare is a nightmare. 50-80GB updates every month and no online play until you update. That can be over 12 hours for me. It's one thing I've noticed since getting a console recently after not having one since the PS2 era. Huge updates constantly. Even when you buy a disc they have to download a bunch of stuff. Such a horrible user experience.
  - tibbydudeza 6y ago
    Probably how the stuff is packaged for consoles where content is continuously streamed to make up for the limited memory on consoles and anemic CPU's so texture maps , world data and game logic are interleaved. Patching all of that is difficult to it is probably easier to replace the content streams in one go.
    - Operyl 6y ago
      This is the case for both PC and consoles for this game :).
hawski 6y ago
If they would only use something like rsync or ostree at the least. But if the biggest files are archives it would require recompression. If it's more like an uncompressed tar archive then it should be easier, but still it would require either a clever algorithm or the format support by the algorithm.
tomxor 6y ago
> Binary patching hasn't been a thing for years unfortunately. True, and it's fair to say binary diffs aren't worth the complexities they introduce anymore, yet the concept of only pulling updates for individual packages has been a thing for over two decades in the *nix world. It seems like a poor choice for Apple to not bother making updates more discerning while also removing binary diffs... certainly a shitty move for anyone without a 99th percentile internet connection - then again everyone outside of that group probably can't afford Apple products anyway. For some perspective: 3.6 GiB is significantly larger than the downloads required to install my entire OS from scratch, and 36 times larger than my average weekly run of apt. From my now outdated experience on Mac OS i'm aware they do divide things into installer packages with some kind of receipt for version info that software update probably probes. So I guess it must be that these packages are not very granular.
- caribousoup 6y ago
  Definitely frustrating for anyone not on broadband. There are more of us than you'd think. It's a giant 'fuck you' from the software industry, real world efficiency be damned.
  - vadarvariu 6y ago
    Totally agree. Updated to Catalina recently and on top of the huge patch size the update client doesn't seem to have any retry mechanism built in. Connection drops 9.9G into a 10G download? Too bad, start over. Just a simple wget -c would do. Incredible.
    - caribousoup 6y ago
      I wonder how many real word resources are wasted over this. It costs money to serve that data, it costs money to download that data, it congests the network wherever that data is being routed, it consumes energy however that is generated in the region. Windows Update does this too, if the transfer fails it starts from zero. Multiply this by... what, a couple million times for each update? I assume they run the numbers and it's cheaper to just dump all the data and run things inefficiently, compared to having teams deploy it correctly. It's just a waste though, and it pisses off your customers.
ascagnel_ 6y ago
Xbox 360 patches were handled differently -- only the game binary would be included in the initial patch; any content updates were released as free DLC add-on packs (or, if a game was releasing new paid DLC, they'd require a new add-on pack that included some subset of the new content for free). PS4 updates are notably bad, since they do a full copy & write (vs write-in-place) on patches. It's good if there's an issue on updating, since you can delete the partially-updated copy and start over, but bad because it requires more than 2x the disk space for the patch.
- modzu 6y ago
  i visited my brother last night and he threw on the xbox. it forced an update. then it downloaded almost a gig and threw an error. then it started again and installed and rebooted and installed.. about half an hour later we'd moved onto other things and never even played it. answered my question about whether or not i wanted one though! lol
tibbydudeza 6y ago
Chrome uses binary patching mechanism rather reliably for millions of users.
ttfkam 6y ago
Yes it has, just not for Apple. Chrome/Chromium do Courgette (binary diff) updates to great effect. Those 8GB Xcode minor release monsters could definitely use some binary diff love. https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/software-updates-courgette https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/softwar...

de_watcher 6y ago

Oh boy, you're spoiled by Linux.

MaysonL 6y ago

2.98 for me…

jiripospisil 6y ago

I "asked HN" about this recently but unfortunately it has not received much attention. Maybe now there are people around who know what exactly happens during an update? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22688198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22688198

saagarjha 6y ago
Not an expert in how the update process works, but the update certainly contains all the changed files, of which there is usually a lot. (I would think this is every project that has had a source code change internally…) There are number of shared- and kext-cache related things that also run afterwards.

tannhaeuser 6y ago

Btw does anyone know how to test-install a newer OS other than with Mac OS' upgrade option burning through 6gb+ downloads supposedly also replacing the OS rather than installing it onto an external disk? I've got an unused old mini that's still on the OS it came with - way out of date. I even went to an Apple dealer to get Mojave onto an SSD drive last year, only to find out that the mini needs a firmware update for APFS that only comes with Mojave/Catalina, but I can't find a download option for only the firmware update so that I could boot from an external AFPS disk.

snazz 6y ago
Can you not just back up the current SSD and repeatedly OTA it to the last supported version? That would be my solution.
- tannhaeuser 6y ago
  Exactly what I had hoped to avoid. I only keep the Mac for cross-platform builds, site testing on Safari, and for hypothetically being able to open old 3D assets, but the old apps almost certainly won't work on newer Mac OS anyway.

caribousoup 6y ago

Right... the earlier point releases were 100-500 MB. Full history of OS X update sizes: https://robservatory.com/a-full-history-of-macos-os-x-release-dates-and-rates/ https://robservatory.com/a-full-history-of-macos-os-x-releas... It seemed to start getting out of hand around Yosemite 2014.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
Yosemite is where OS X started getting out of hand in general, though it took a while for the papercuts to add up.