Re: port selfupdate, rsync, and tight firewalls

On Sep 5, 2006, at 22:31, Joe Auty wrote:

>> 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.

Not a problem if you provide the Subversion port (and its  
dependencies) in the MacPorts dmg download so that it's already there  
from the first moment you install MacPorts.