Re: port selfupdate, rsync, and tight firewalls

On Sep 5, 2006, at 4:22 PM, James Berry wrote:

>
> On Sep 5, 2006, at 12:17 PM, Johnathan Gifford wrote:
>
>>>>> On Tue, Sep 5, 2006 at  1:36 PM, in message
>> <[email protected]>, James Berry
>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> Johnathan,
>>>
>>> No, we don't plan to change this in the very near term. Yes, we will
>>
>>> be changing it somewhere in the mid- term, but I can't tell you to
>>> what it will be changed. There's some chance that we may move away
>>> from use of rsync altogether, toward a more http- only solution like
>>
>>> subversion over http. Or that the rsync hostname will become:
>>> rsync.macports.org.
>>>
>>> James
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Who is the who in 'we' that makes these decisions?  Better yet, who
>> should I try to convince that an http-only solution behind  
>> Subversion is
>> a more practical solution for those of us behind tight firewalls.   
>> After
>> all port 80 is always accessible.
>
> Well, that would be the collective "we", or, perhaps, those with  
> commit rights to base. Personally, I'm very interested in getting  
> away from rsync. Factors that might argue against doing that might be:
>
> 	- Server load of a subversion "update" operation vs rsync.
> 	- Network I/O efficiency differential between the two methods
> 	- Speed differential between the two methods
> 	- Fact that subversion would/might become a dependency, and the  
> fact that it's not installed on the base os until Leopard.
>
> I can't really quantify any of those at present, except the last.  
> The first three are more in the "fear" realm than in the "known"  
> realm.
>
> As a potential work-around for you in the short-term, note that our  
> ports tree _is_ presently available via subversion, over http, so  
> you could just use subversion to keep up to date, instead of "port  
> sync".
>




Just speaking in terms of usability, while technically it might make  
sense to go to Subversion, by doing so you put yourself in a chicken/ 
egg situation where people need to compile subversion before they can  
use the software properly.

I would suggest providing both, and phase out rsync at around the  
same time you phase out support for Tiger.






-----------
Joe Auty
NetMusician: web publishing software for musicians
http://www.netmusician.org
[email protected]