Re: Default to fetching from CDN first?

[David Holland <dholland-pkgtech%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Fri, Sep 13, 2019 at 08:24:44PM +0100, Ottavio Caruso wrote:
 > > > The whole point of mirroring distfiles is to avoid having to notice
 > > > when the file goes missing upstream.
 > >
 > > That's the point for everyone but the package maintainer.
 > 
 > ...but also anybody who wants to update the package, offer a patch or
 > simply report a bug.

There is no reason these activities are dependent on the distfile
existing upstream, as long as it's available. Again, the whole point
of mirroring distfiles is to avoid having to notice when the upstream
file goes missing. If there's an update to do, that should be prompted
by a new version appearing, not by an old version disappearing.

If the whole upstream disappears, there's a range of things that can't
be done, yes, but polling aggressively to find out that it's happened
doesn't buy anything; when you find out it's already too late.

Granted, there are packages that don't allow redistributing the
distfile, and for those the considerations are different, but for
are a minority and generally the result will just be that they get
removed from pkgsrc.

 > Wouldn't it just be easier to implement distfile checking in PKG_DEVELOPER ?

...doing a lot of expensive network checks on every build? Please, no.

-- 
David A. Holland
dholland%netbsd.org@localhost