Date: Sun, 16 Apr 1995 09:43:43 +0300
From: eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il. (Eli Zaretskii)
To: A DOT APPLEYARD AT fs2 DOT mt DOT umist DOT ac DOT uk
Subject: Re: Distributing djgpp (or any other large package)
Cc: DJGPP AT SUN DOT SOE DOT CLARKSON DOT EDU


>   (1) Each user should load it from Simtel.
>	The FTP is very often very slow due to the internet being busy, and
> remote sites are often logged-in full and I keep getting told to login again
> later.

I use a program called BatchFTP in these cases.  This little wonder lets
me log off the machine while it keeps trying to log into the remote site
and, when it succeeds, downloads the software.  ``It won't get tired or
despaired, and it absolutely won't give up'' ("Terminator") untill it
gets what I want.  It is also nice to the remote site: it sleeps for
some time between log-in attempts.

>   (3) The site distributes it on 28 floppies.
>	That many floppies take ages to format and write to, then to read from
> and unzip, for each person who wants a copy.

If that person follows the recommended procedure to read the FAQ and then
only download what she/he needs, then the number of floppies is much, MUCH
less.  For instance, my set of files takes only 10 floppies (and I have most
of the package, as you might have guessed).