[pacman-dev] MirrorBrain for mirrors?

[Dieter Plaetinck]

On Fri, 3 Jul 2009 17:10:00 +0200
Peter Poeml <poeml at cmdline.net> wrote:

> Hi!
> 
> To quickly introduce myself, I am the author of MirrorBrain and I
> noticed you discussion here.
> 
Hello Peter, thanks for your post.

> MirrorBrain also creates Metalinks. Didn't you guys start using
> those? I saw http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=573250
> (regarding ISO images)

Community effort (not official).   I've never seen the use of
this, as our torrent files are webseed enabled. (eg you can do pull it
with torrent + pull from various mirrors at the same time)

> and I noticed usage for package management
> being mentioned here:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalink#In_use
> "Metalink is also being tested with Arch Linux's Pacman which is used
> for package management."

Not sure about that.
> 
> openSUSE is switching to metalinks for downloads of packages and
> metadata by the package management with the next release (using aria2c
> in the background).  If you consider doing something similar,
> MirrorBrain would be the perfect basis to deploy this.
> 

"Simplicity" is on the top of our list of values, metalinks seem to
introduce a layer of complexity (but it also brings some niceties).
Imho I would look at the option of just using mirrorbrain as mirror
manager and redirector, without the metalinks.


> I'd be very happy to help out with getting MirrorBrain up and running
> for you guys, if you are interested!

That's very nice.
I've said it earlier, I think mirrorbrain looks very useful.  Though
I'm afraid I don't have much spare time in reserve.

> If you want to know more, please let me know. I'm subscribed to the
> pacman-dev mailing list, and will stay for a little while, but it
> would be safe to reach me at my email, or you could just post to the
> mirrorbrain at mirrorbrain.org mailing list (you don't need to
> subscribe first).
> 
> Thanks,
> Peter

No, thank you
Dieter

PS: Will you be at froscon by any chance?  Several Arch Linux guys will
be there.  (I was at fosdem too but missed your talk)

Dieter