Re: port selfupdate, rsync, and tight firewalls

On Sep 6, 2006, at 6:08 AM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:

> 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.
>


If we are free to include Subversion in this fashion, problem solved.