Build servers going offline due to inclement weather

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Feb 20, 2021, at 00:54, Richard L. Hamilton wrote:

> Thank you for the information, and for your work!
> 
> Question: if someone changed their configuration as you mentioned to get Portfiles from GitHub, would they EVER (in principle) see a version of a Portfile that would NEVER make it to the rsync server (if/when the buildmaster etc was up)?  In other words, I might change my configuration (so as to be less affected by similar future outages) if I'm not risking getting a Portfile that's different from what I'd get otherwise (just sooner, sometimes), and assuming there's no other downside to me from change.

What's on the rsync server is a time-delayed copy of what's on GitHub. Usually the delay is only up to about an hour, when the server that does the copying isn't offline.

The downsides of using GitHub instead of rsync are that it will take more space on your disk (because you have a clone of the entire history of the repository, not just the current files as you would have with rsync) and it will take more time when you sync (because you will be generating the portindex locally instead of getting a copy from the rsync server).