[arch-dev-public] pkgstats: second try

[Dan McGee]

On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 10:52 AM, Pierre Schmitz <pierre at archlinux.de> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> two years ago (http://www.archlinux.org/news/419/) I created a stupid
> script to get some stats about package usage from our users.
>
> I did some improvements. The client now submits the mirror used by
> pacman. On the server side statistics about the country (looked up by
> geoip) are stored and more important all data are stored with a
> timestamp. This way we should be able to see usage trends etc.. It would
> also be possible to have users submit data regularly without messing up
> all stats.
>
> For now please have a look at the client itself. Check the output of
> "-s" and make sure you are using 2.0-2; especially if you use a password
> in your mirrorlist. ;-) The results can be found at
> https://www.archlinux.de/?page=PackageStatistics It's quite rough and
> needs a lot of optimization. It also just shows the overall stats.
>
> Note, that my goal is to collect data that are actually useful to us
> and not just nice to see. If you have any suggestions or ideas let me
> know. I think once this is working properly we should make another
> announcement to get helpful stats for a package cleanup or some
> mirroring improvements.

I dream of a day when this stuff can all be in the main Arch website
for everyone to see. Any interest in learning Django, Pierre? :)

If anyone out there (yes, you users) knows Django and is looking to
contribute to Arch or just hone your Django skills, I would be glad to
chat with you about implementing a lot of these type of things in the
main site. I've done quite a bit of work lately but I am only one
person. Architecture differences is now implemented in the main site,
and I am working to get a mirror status report in there as well. If we
started thinking about this as well, that would really add some value
to the site.

I like the updates you've made. I wonder if it is worth trying to do
something a little more sophisticated than just IP address for
determining if someone is a repeat customer. The two cases are "my IP
is dynamic and changes if I sneeze (thank you crappy DSL connection)"
and "we have 200 machines behind one IP address".

-Dan