Re: [Caml-list] Debian apt-proxy/apt-cacher replacement

[Goswin von Brederlow <brederlo@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de>]

Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr> writes:

> On Sun, Jan 30, 2005 at 04:47:56PM -0500, Eric C. Cooper wrote:
>> Approx is a proxy server, written in OCaml, that can be used as an
>> alternative to apt-proxy or apt-cacher.  I've been using it for about
>> a month, and I find it faster and more robust than apt-proxy.
>
> Cool, ...

Very cool. I was about 90% ready to write one myself. :)

> I wonder if this should be packaged apart, or together with the other
> ocaml-written package related code, namely ara. I don't know if you are aware
> of that effort.
>
>> You can find the source and a Debian binary package at
>>     http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ecc/software.html
>
> Cool, will have a look.
>
>> (If any Debian gurus have suggestions on whether/how to announce this
>> to the broader Debian community, please contact me off-list.)
>
> I am CCing this to debian-ocaml-maint mailing list, where all debian related
> folk interested i ocaml dwell. Maybe comments will come from there, and i will
> try to test and reply more in details later this week, as i am soon going to
> the Solutions Linux forum in Paris, and am not sure i will really have time
> for testing this kind of stuff until next WE.
>
> Friendly,
>
> Sven Luther

I see approx uses libcurl which makes it less cool again. Curl, among
other things, has no support for serializing multiple downloads into a
keep-alive connection. What I mean is that you can send 10 GET
requests to a server and then wait for 10 files to be send back. No
point sending each GET only after the previous file is done and
waiting for the round trip.

Anyway, a nice feature would be support for apt methods. Interfacing
with apts methods is real easy and you automatically get support for
file, copy, http, ftp urls and any future protocol to come.


I will try to test approx too but over the last month I heard many
complains about apt-proxy so approx might be welcomed immeditatly by
many.

MfG
        Goswin