MacPorts caching of distfiles [was Re: ntfs-3g 1.1120 source missing]

[Jordan K. Hubbard]

On Feb 22, 2008, at 11:35 AM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:

>> The macports repository is the only place macports is looking for it,
>> so it must have been there at some point or the port would never have
>> passed even the most rudimentary QA.
>
> No, the first place it's looking for it is the ntfs-3g web site,
> which is where it should be, only they apparently removed it because
> it was an old version:

This brings up an interesting topic that was due for discussion  
anyway:  Pretty much all the major port collections projects provide a  
distfile cache and I think it's time that MacPorts did as well.  We  
have the bandwidth, we have the disk space (I recently approved an  
upgrade to the MacOSForge XSAN array for this), so why don't we use it  
already?  Having an equivalent of FreeBSD's MASTER_SITE would be  
trivial to implement, assuming someone hasn't already (I haven't  
looked at the default fetch path recently), and there is the ancillary  
benefit of enabling institutions/universities to create their own  
caches and point this variable at it for local overrides.   It's a  
well-established fact that it can dramatically cut down on the time it  
takes to build ports, particularly if the project itself ever takes  
seriously the notion of nightly/weekly/whatever regression test builds.

- Jordan