On Thu, 9 Feb 2006, Pascal Bleser wrote:
If there is interest in this topic, I might prepare some slides to give a "speed talk" on this at FOSDEM.
I have been thinking of an xml file that could include all installation sources. Think http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/, but with GeoIP included.
Unfortunately my knowledge of XML (and using it) is very limited. I would very much talk to people about this on FOSDEM and see what can do what and how. If I would have had more knowledge, I would have had a working example.
Sure, we'll find some time to discuss that during FOSDEM. I'm pretty experienced with XSLT, I'm sure I can contribute something to the idea ;)
Could you make a few slides about it to introduce the topic during the speed talks ? We'll fork a short BOF from that, with some people interested in the topic (count me in).
I understand that the file (or at least not all of it) might not be allowed on openSUSE or Novell. It could be hosted somewhere else. Yet that could be decided at FOSDEM (and after the standard for the XML is fixed)
Yes, we first have to discuss what information would be useful in there, then write a schema for it, then collect the data.
Another option would be to write a script (or a Java application or whatever) that uses that XML file to validate the mirrors (e.g. using HTTP HEAD and/or browsing the various URLs to see whether the mirrors listed in the file actually have the required content). Would be very useful to report broken mirrors, at least to a given point, it shouldn't crawl all subdirectories and collect all files, just some files like "directory.yast" and "content".
... no need to reinvent the wheel -- download.openSUSE.org already does "some magic" to keep a local state cache of the mirrors, ie. it knows if a file is on a mirror or not and actually checks this prior redirecting ;) Anyway -- I'll prepare some slides on the current download.openSUSE.org technology ;) Houghi, will you prepare some slides as well? Maybe we can merge them and present them together? Regards Christoph