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Can files included in a torrent be updated after the fact? I guess the issue is the archive is constantly growing and rsync deals with that gracefully.

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Don't quote me on it, but I think this would be possible with v2 of the protocol. Changes were made so that file hashes are also part of the protocol (in addition to piece hashes), so versions of the torrent with added files would not change the hashes of the existing files, enabling users with older versions of the torrent metadata to still join the current swarm and get information on the new files.

This is the case, but with fairly severe caveats. There is no way for a client who wants to download a dead/unhealthy torrent to find other healthier torrents containing the same file(s).

You'd need some kind of central torrent directory to be able to do this, because the DHT has no way to search for torrents containing a file hash.

Torrent swarms still aren't a good way to do distributed archiving.

No, but if you point the new torrent at an old data directory it should skip downloading the existing data.

Although you will only download from people on the same version as you.

IPFS us probably a better fit here as content will be downloaded from anyone who has it even cross-version. IPNS could also be used for distributing updates.

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