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[Help] Why do app updates have download sizes almost as large as the apps themselves? (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/programming

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They seem to be too big for what devs claim to be a 'minor patch' and yet too small to suggest a complete reinstallation of the app. Is there some technical reason behind it? I would like to request an ELI5 for this.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

That can get really convoluted, especially when users update at different times from different past versions.

One user may be able to make the most recent changes as they have the most recent version not including the update thats being pushed right now; another user however may be 15 revisions behind and have to find and apply each of those 15 updates in the correct order to arrive at the same set of files.

It's much easier to just push the most recent set of files in their entirety to users and have them replace whatever they've got. Then you know they didn't make any mistakes applying several subsequent changes in a row.