[Aptitude-devel] Caching network data

[Stefano Zacchiroli]

On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 08:41:51AM -0700, Daniel Burrows wrote:
>   Hm, I hadn't thought to look at proxies.  My first reaction is
> that I really don't want to force every aptitude user to set up and
> configure a proxy server.  Even if there isn't any configuration, a
> lot of users don't like to have something running on their computer
> that they "don't need".

Well, if aptitude uses it and if they want to benefit of network
caches, they will need it by definition :)

Anyhow, my point was mostly about reusal. *IF* there is a proxy
solution that come with a sane default configuration and can be used
by aptitude acing as a client, I think it would be worth to
investigate. But given that I'm just suggesting and haven't actually
done the homework of considering all available solution, you can
safely ignore me :)

> I'd much rather have something that aptitude can link against at
> run-time.

Ah, I didn't get that from your first post: a proxy-enabled network
library, is that it? That would be very reasonable, even though I
don't know have any such library right on top of my head.

>   The thing that appeals to me about sqlite is that it can handle a
> lot of the most tricky bits of managing a cache (maintaining
> consistency, concurrent read/write access, indexed lookups, throwing
> out old entries, etc) in a lightweight way, with no need for an
> external process.

True. The drawbacks are that if you want it to be transparent for the
user you have to be a bit careful. A cache can grow and I (as a user)
like to know that I can throw it away when I want without breaking the
depending application. That works for most of the stuff living under
/var/cache/. So, if you want to go that way, I suggest to use a
.sqlite file there, ensuring that the user can delete it whenever she
wants.

Cheers.

-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..|  .  |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...........| ..: |.... Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime
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