Mail Archives: cygwin/2003/04/03/19:38:05
On 4 Apr 2003, Robert Collins wrote:
> On Fri, 2003-04-04 at 07:48, Alan Dobkin wrote:
>
> > > > My question is this: Why is it necessary to scan every package
> > > > in the mirror every time setup is run against a local mirror?
> > > > Most of the time, I am only installing a single package or a
> > > > few updates. It seems that setup should only check the packages
> > > > being installed, and the rest of them should be ignored.
> > >
> > > How do you create / maintain that local mirror. Via setup,
> > > or via an external script of some sort?
> >
> > Using wget, as recommended from the Cygwin web site. I've been
> > doing this the same way for at least a year, and it has worked
> > fine for all previous setup releases.
>
> And it works for this one too.
I didn't mean to imply that it doesn't work now, only that the method
I've used to create the mirror doesn't seem to be the problem.
> It's also clearly noted that cygwins local package directory is
> subject to change without notice -
I understand that the directory is subject to change, but the
nature of a mirror implies that the changes are automatically
propogated and thus setup should still work. Are you saying that
setup would no longer support the same directory structure that
is present on the current mirror sites at that same time? Or in
other words, that setup would use different directory structures
for local and remote mirrors? This doesn't make sense to me....
> you should use apache or IIS to serve out the mirror and add
> it to your mirror selection creen in the custom URL field.
>
> Then, setup won't check the md5's of every package.
This seems like an overly complex workaround just to preserve
the existing functionality. And, it has the side effect of
creating another cache on each client system and re-downloading
each package before it is installed. This negates one of the
main reasons why I set up the local mirror in the first place,
i.e. so I could maintain a single repository on a local server
and avoid having a bunch of local caches on each installation.
> The reason setup checks all the md5's is to ensure that what
> it's discovered in the cache hasn't been corrupted.
That makes sense, but then there should be a way to bypass
this check so it doesn't happen every time. Perhaps something
like a dirty/clean flag that filesystems use to prevent having
to do a fsck/chkdsk every time it's mounted. Setup could set
this flag in its cache to dirty every time it does a download
and then set it to clean every time the full MD5 scan is done.
Or, a more simple workaround would be a setup option to just
bypass the initial scan. Doesn't setup check the MD5 sums
when it installs the selected packages anyway? Couldn't the
scan to check for cache corruption be performed after the
package selection screen, so it only affects the packages
being installed? At least this would cut down on the long
initial delay and combine it with the same time-consuming
portion where the packages are being installed. That way
the user only has to go get a cup of coffee once during the
installation process instead of twice. :-)
> There was another thread on this in cygwin-apps. Max
> considers it a release blocker, I don't. Accordingly,
> I said I was happy to consider patches....
I finally found this thread after a while of searching:
http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin-apps/2003-03/threads.html#00443
I don't necessarily consider it a release blocker, but I
think other users in the same boat will find it very annoying
if there is no bypass option after this version is released.
I agree with Max's comment that it will be the #1 complaint.
I would gladly write a patch if I had the ability to do it
in a reasonable amount of time, but I'm sure others are set
up to do it in a small fraction of the time it would take me.
Thanks,
Alan
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