Re: Trimming the CPAN - "Automatic Purging"

On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 01:03:51PM +1100, Adam Kennedy wrote:
> I've said nothing till now, because I figured more noise wouldn't help much.
> 
> But I quite like the rsync daemon/proxy idea, and as it so happens I'm
> attending the OzLabs Unconference in 3 weeks time to hang out with
> Tridge, Rusty and the other Australia C/Kernel/Samba/RSync elites.
> 
> So I'd be happy to raise any issues or ideas in this area with them in
> person over beers.

I can see two possibly useful things (and I have no idea if either is yet
possible, or a great understanding of how the protocol works)

1: stateful rsync daemon which doesn't scan all the time, either by
   a: Actually having a means to update
   b: Simply telling fibs, and pretending that the file system it scanned
      $n minutes ago is still current. (Which I think would work, at least for
      a mirror where files aren't edited (much) - if the server discovers that
      the client's view of that file *is* out of date, then scan that file for
      real, and give the up to date truth)

2: federated (or federate-able) server (or proxy) - so that you can say
   "hand this subtree off to that other server"
   This would allow the (fast, existing, C) rsync server to serve most of
   (say) funet.fi, handing off to a stateful server for the CPAN subtree.

Nicholas Clark