debdelta works by downloading incremental changes between packages and patching the installed data. In theory you could:


Install the original version of a package (using apt-cache policy and the apt-get install package==version syntax)
Upgrade with debdelta


But that's a silly idea. The sum filesize of the original archive plus all the incremental updates will be far in excess of an updated package. Plus the CPU time required to install it is much higher.

If you have a locally centralised copy of packages (like an out-of-date mirror), I can start to appreciate why you might want to do this but again, if there's more than one client computer involved, updating that mirror seems like a better solution.



Purely from a syntax point of view, this is from man debdelta-upgrade:

debdelta-upgrade [OPTION]... [PACKAGE] ...


You can specify one or many packages if you want to limit the upgrade.

Can I use debdelta to install/update single package?
Suppose you're some sort of crazy nerd fellow and you live in an area that's absolutely covered in fiber optics and network facilities. What kind of cost / infrastructure would be needed to hook in somewhere and get you're internet connection directly from a local datacenter?
