Suggestion

[Ryan Schmidt]

On May 27, 2013, at 11:46, Dan Aldrich wrote:

> How about adding the number of downloads/updates to the port files list on the web page? Lets you see how active a particular port is when searching for a particular app.

While gathering statistics, and then creating a way of displaying that information to users, could be useful and has been discussed many times before, it might be important to first discuss why this feature is desired and what information it is thought to convey to users, and then figure out what specific statistics need to be collected to meet those goals.

Do we count downloads of source code? or downloads of binary packages? or both? Binary packages are different per OS version and variant combination. Presumably we aggregate these together per version? Do we count all downloads ever for all versions, or reset the counter at each version?

As Larry pointed out, downloads currently happen from any number of servers, including servers not controlled by the MacPorts project. Tracking all such downloads would involve changes to MacPorts base, for example a central download script on our server that logs the download request and then redirects the user to a server with the actual file.

Are we wanting to track this information in order to gauge popularity of ports? If so, would other data capture that information better? Should users be able to "star" or "favorite" ports as a way of indicating popularity? Should MacPorts "phone home" whenever a port is installed or uninstalled, thus tracking what ports people are actually using? This has been proposed before and was thought by some users to be too invasive. It could be made opt-in, but that would make it basically useless IMHO.