CentOS RPM – What is DRPM and How Does it Differ from RPM

centosrpm

Doing an update on my CentOS 7 box and I noticed that there was a handful of DRPMs being installed. After doing some searches on google, there is no straight up Answer for this question so I thought it would fit here to ask.

  • I am wondering what is a DRPM?
  • How does it differ from a RPM package?

Best Answer

A drpm stands for delta rpm, which is an addition to an existing rpm, and only contains the different files. Source:

Delta RPM packages contain the difference between an old and a new version of an RPM package. Applying a delta RPM on an old RPM results in the complete new RPM. It is not necessary to have a copy of the old RPM, because a delta RPM can also work with an installed RPM. The delta RPM packages are even smaller in size than patch RPMs, which is an advantage when transferring update packages over the Internet. The drawback is that update operations with delta RPMs involved consume considerably more CPU cycles than plain or patch RPMs.

The README file referred to in the documentation can be found in the GitHub repository. You will see that deltarpm is based on bsdiff.

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