MacPorts webapp project updates

[Mojca Miklavec]

Dear Ryan,

On Mon, 18 May 2020 at 21:47, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
> On May 17, 2020, at 11:48, Arjun Salyan wrote:
>
> > We also plan to add a caching engine so that exploring the webapp remains smooth even with the ever-growing port statistics data. This makes the need for a new host even more important.
>
> Not sure specifically what you're planning with regard to caching, but note that we already have an arrangement with the MaxCDN content delivery network and we currently use it for www, guide, distfiles and packages. We can also use it for the ports webapp if desired. It would just be a matter of tuning the settings to decide how long the data should be cached.

The caching is primarily not so much about big data files (or actual
troubles with tons of visitors) as it is about whether the query "Show
me on which macOS versions the wine port is broken" needs to be
executed in the database every single time any random visitor opens or
refreshes the port page (even if the port didn't see any changes for
months and meanwhile thousands of visitors query the page). I don't
know to what extent MaxCDN can help here given that the main problem
is the lack of memory required to even run the site on the existing
server.

We can certainly check whether we could make use of MaxCDN (I don't
know to what extent a page that's dynamic in nature can be supported
there), but the immediate "urgency" is to find an alternative hosting
solution altogether.

Mojca