cvsup vs. portsnap (was Re: cvsup problem)

[Andrew P.]

On 11/9/05, Colin Percival <cperciva at freebsd.org> wrote:
> Kirk Strauser wrote:
> > On Wednesday 09 November 2005 12:44, Kent Stewart wrote:
> >>If you aren't going to rebuild everything, every time you cvsup, don't do
> >>it.
> >
> > Out of curiosity, are 10 small cvsup sessions worse than 1 session with 10
> > times the changes?
>
> Yes.  Each time you run CVSup, it transmits a list of all the files in the
> tree; if your ports tree is almost up-to-date already, then this "overhead"
> cost is in fact the largest contributor to the bandwidth used.  This problem
> does not occur with portsnap to any significant extent; updating once an hour
> uses less than 1% extra bandwidth compared to updating every day.
>
> > Anyway, I've fallen in love with portsnap.  Is there any reason in the world
> > why a normal user (eg one that doesn't need to fetch a version of ports
> > from a specific date or tag) shouldn't completely switch to portsnap today?
>
> The other common reason for being unable to use portsnap is if a user has made
> their own personal changes to a port (e.g., an added patch).  Portsnap will
> remove such changes the next time the port is updated, while cvs will attempt
> to merge the modifications.
>
> Colin Percival
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There are a couple more points against portsnap:
- it lags behind by a few hours.
- setting up a mirror is still undocumented

Both issues are purely technical, and hopefully
will be dealt with soon.