[Frugalware-devel] Suggestion regarding Frugalware package mirroring

[Russell Dickenson]

Recently the Frugalware mirror closest to me - ftp13 - became
unreliable.  When pacman-g2 repeatedly failed to download packages
from this mirror it had me thinking about the problem.

**********
Here I need to add a standard disclaimer.  What I'm about to describe
may already have been thought of, discussed and dismissed as being a
"bad idea".  Anyway, here are my thoughts for whatever they're worth.
I should point out that the Australian dollar is just a few cents less
in value than the USA dollar.  :)
**********

Here's how I understand Frugalware package mirroring to work, and how
releases are affected -

Around the time of a new Frugalware release, a new folder is created
with its name being the release's version number.  Into that folder
(or perhaps a sub-folder) go all the packages for that release.  These
initially go to the master server and are then mirrored by the various
Frugalware mirrors.  Mirroring takes some time so there's a few days
of waiting between the release and the release's announcement.  Once
the announcement is made, people start downloading and installing or
upgrading.  Some mirrors may still be out of sync with the master and
so pacman-g2 tries all the mirrors in its list for each package.

Now for my idea (finally!) - why not have one folder named "packages"
(or something similar) which contains all packages for current and the
latest release?  When the following release occurs, most of the
packages required will have been in current for some time and so
already be mirrored.  At most there will be a relatively small number
of packages, mostly to do with release naming, configuration files
etc, still to be mirrored.  If this method was used I believe it would
reduce the time it takes each mirror to be sync-ed for each new
release.

I'd welcome any feedback.


May you always be Frugal,

Russell Dickenson (AKA phayz)