Re: Announcing jigdo-easy 2.1 - please test
On 12 Apr 2002, Philip Hands wrote:
> On Thu, 2002-04-11 at 23:53, J.A. Bezemer wrote:
> > (Note that the support for multi-image .jigdo files does NOT mean that I think
> > this is a good idea. The only useful application I see is the merging of two
> > almost-exactly-the-same .jigdo files into one, but I doubt that this will be
> > done in practice. It's just that _if_ someone _ever_ would decide to do such a
> > (IMHO) Bad Thing, jigdo-easy can handle it. And far more user-friendly than
> > intended, too ;-)
>
> Oh, OK --- I thought it was quite a good idea to merge the 1 and 1_NONUS
> jigdo files. Was I wrong? I was looking at the format, thinking "Hm, I
> wonder if that'll work" and planning on giving it a try tommorow.
Merging 1 and 1_NONUS is the thing I was referring to as being "acceptable".
Richard previously implied that he wanted _all_ woody's 80+ CD images in one
big jigdo file. The general trend in Debian is to split up things as far as
reasonably possible to avoid downloading/installing things you don't use (for
example -doc .debs). I think this is a good idea and should apply to .jigdo
files as well. Individual .jigdo files are already quite large (even when
compressed), considering that users will have to actively wait for them to
trickle in over their modems (think free local calls -- or worse, "expensive"
bandwidth) before they can select what sub-[Image] they want and can choose
the mirror for each category that the .jigdo file specifies. Furthermore, most
users will only download CD 1 (_maybe_ 2), so with one big .jigdo file they
would be downloading much (>70%) data that they would never use at all. Having
(or thinking about) a .jigdo file for a DVD image does not automatically mean
that we should immediately merge everything else into it. I can't see any good
reason for that. Instead, I've just given a few reasons _against_ that. Space
and bandwidth on _mirrors_ is never a problem because of their nature, so I
feel quite strongly that we should make things as fast and easy for our users
as possible.
(Oh, I think I understand why the multi-image .jigdo concept was created in
the first place, namely to provide one single URL (namely the single .jigdo)
for "all Debian CDs" and to have the user select the correct image from within
the jigdo download tool. However, this quite limited mechanism has already
been replaced by an alternative that is far more flexible, much easier to use,
and also better scalable, namely the jigdo-easy menu system.)
Regards,
Anne Bezemer
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-cd-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
Reply to: