Re: [gentoo-dev] New distfile mirror layout

[Joshua Kinard <kumba@gentoo.org>]

On 10/21/2019 06:13, Kent Fredric wrote:
> On Sun, 20 Oct 2019 16:57:54 -0400
> Joshua Kinard <kumba@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
>> I know we've got a ton of Perl packages for the core set of Perl modules,
>> but doesn't the CPAN eclass also have the capability to auto-generate an
>> ebuild package for virtually any Perl package distributed via CPAN?  Can
>> that logic be used with the CTAN system in its own eclass and then we remove
>> the 16k+ texlive modules off of our mirrors completely?  Or at the worst, we
>> might just have to generate ebuilds for texlive modules and treat them as
>> discrete, installed packages.
> 
> - Perl packages never have more than 1:1 source archives per ebuild
> - Perl upstream naming doesn't habitually use "perl-" as an archive prefix
> - Everything that is packaged for Perl in Gentoo is mirrored to the
>   Gentoo distfiles mirror, and this causes no issues.
> 
> So I don't think any comparison here makes sense.

I have to disagree on the "doesn't make sense" bit.  Regardless of what it
is that TexLive is packaging, the problem that I feel exists is storing
these macro packages on our mirrors is what is responsible for 20% of *all*
distfiles that we store.  That's lopsided that a small collection of
ebuilds, due to the way their build logic is architected, has that many
distfiles on the mirrors.

It's scenarios like that which led to Michał developing the GLEP the way he
did.  His approach is more broad, seeking to future-proof the mirroring
issue regardless of package mirroring decisions, whereas I'm more curious
why texlive needs all of those packages on our mirrors when it appears to
have a fairly comprehensive mirroring system of its own.  Why reinvent the
wheel?

Since CTAN exists as a worldwide mirroring system, I think at a minimum, we
should try to fetch from that directly instead of mirroring them on our own
systems and partner mirrors.  Or we could go the other way and become an
official CTAN mirror ourselves.  After all, if we're going to reinvent the
wheel, do all four instead of just one.

And for Perl or Python, I think we should be making an effort to leverage
their respective mirroring systems first before putting their distfiles onto
our mirrors.  Perl's got CPAN, and Python has pypi.  For things that don't
exist on those systems, then we use our mirrors.

-- 
Joshua Kinard
Gentoo/MIPS
kumba@gentoo.org
rsa6144/5C63F4E3F5C6C943 2015-04-27
177C 1972 1FB8 F254 BAD0 3E72 5C63 F4E3 F5C6 C943

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