Jigdo

Infobox Software
name = Jigdo



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latest release version = 0.7.3
latest release date = 2006-05-20 [cite mailing list |last=Atterer |first=Richard |title=jigdo 0.7.3 released |date=2006-05-20 |accessdate=2008-09-03 |mailinglist=jigdo-user |url=https://lists.berlios.de/pipermail/jigdo-user/2006-May/000086.html ]
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programming language = C++
operating system = Linux, Windows, Solaris, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, IRIX
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genre = Download utility
license = GNU General Public License
website = http://atterer.net/jigdo/

Jigdo (portmanteau of "Jigsaw" and "download") is a download utility designed for the Debian distribution of GNU/Linux that downloads files from several mirrors in order to build an optical disk image. Currently Fedoracite web |url=http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f9/en_US/sn-OverView.html#id3103303 |title=2. Release Highlights#Jigdo |work=Fedora 9 Release Notes |date=2008-04-16 |accessdate=2008-09-03] , SolarisFact|date=September 2008, WindowsFact|date=August 2008 and FreeBSDFact|date=September 2008 are also available through Jigdo.

A typical application of Jigdo is with its jigdo-file utility. A user that wishes to assemble a disk image downloads a relatively very small file called "imagename.jigdo". The jigdo-file utility invoked with this file as an argument then proceeds to fetch additional files from the Internet: "imagename.template" and a series of .deb files that are listed in the .jigdo file. It then uses the mkisofs utility to build the ISO image.

Jigdo was implemented in Debian in order to reduce the need to have many CD image mirror sites, locations with sufficient disk space and bandwidth to serve numerous 650 MB files (and in more recent times, 4.7 GB files for DVD images). Instead, Jigdo files allow mirrors to carry the regular Debian archive, where packages are not grouped together in image files and instead kept separately where they are also accessible through apt-get and still allow for the making of optical disk images.

Since the release of Fedora 9 Alpha, all future release of Fedora will provide jigdo as an alternative download method for people without bittorrent access. [cite web |url=http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/JigdoRelease |title=Features/JigdoRelease |date=2008-06-05 |accessdate=2008-09-03 |publisher=Fedora Project] Also, jigdo versions of Fedora 8 discs are available [cite web |url=http://fedoraunity.org/news-archives/fedora-8-cd-sets-released |publisher=Fedora Unity |date=2007-12-04 |accessdate=2008-09-03 |title=Fedora 8 CD Sets Released! ] as well as many others variants [cite web |url=http://spins.fedoraunity.org/spins |title=Unity Spins |date=2007-10-30 |accessdate=2008-09-03 |publisher=Fedora Unity] .

Jigdo is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

pyJigdo

Due to the moribund state of the original Jigdo code--the GUI client does not support multi-image templates, meaning the command-line tools are required--Fedora has been developing a Python-based GUI, called pyJigdo.

References

External links

* [http://atterer.net/jigdo/ Official homepage]
* [http://www.debian.org/CD/jigdo-cd/ Downloading Debian CD images with jigdo]
* [http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Debian-Jigdo/ Debian Jigdo mini-HOWTO]
* [http://jigdoosx.berlios.de/ Jigdo Port for Mac OS X (and GUI)]