Re: Trimming the CPAN - "Automatic Purging"

On Thursday 01 April 2010 05:39:27 David Nicol wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 7:43 AM, Ask Bjørn Hansen <[email protected]> wrote:
> > The main point here is that we can't use 20 inodes per distribution.
> 
> so don't. How much reengineering would be needed to keep CPAN in a
> database instead of a file system?

It'd mean each and every mirror operator changing how they sync their mirrors, 
and how access is provided...

Currently, it's dead simple to sync a copy of CPAN via rsync, offer it up via 
whatever combination of HTTP, FTP and rsync you prefer, and job done - you're 
doing a valuable public service by offering a CPAN mirror.

Make that process a lot harder (setting up database replication, custom 
scripts, etc etc) and a lot of people just won't do it.

There's a lot to be said for keeping things simple.

(FWIW, I run mirrors.uk2.net, and appreciated the fact it was simple and easy 
to get a mirror up and running without investing much time at all.  
Personally, I have no real problem with the current size of CPAN or the 
overhead of updating via rsync, but that's just my opinion.)

Cheers

Dave P