ostree/docs/copying-deltas.md

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# Static deltas for offline updates
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1. TOC
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<!-- SPDX-License-Identifier: (CC-BY-SA-3.0 OR GFDL-1.3-or-later) -->

OSTree supports generating "self-contained" static delta files, via an
invocation similar to the following:

```
$ ostree --repo=/path/to/repo static-delta generate --min-fallback-size=0 --filename=delta-update-file --from=<from> <to>
```

Note the usage of `--min-fallback-size=0` to ensure that the delta is self-contained.

Then, you can copy `delta-update-file` to a USB key or similar, and a target system can apply it via e.g.:

```
$ ostree --repo=/ostree/repo static-delta apply-offline /path/to/delta-update-file
```

The above invocation will merely apply the content into the repository.
To make it bootable, this will then need to be further followed up by e.g. `ostree admin deploy <to>` or
with a higher level tool such as `rpm-ostree`, via `rpm-ostree deploy :<to>`.