[Distutils] Sourceforge mirrors, again

[Kevin Dangoor]

On Sep 19, 2006, at 11:51 AM, Phillip J. Eby wrote:

> Well, it looks like Sourceforge has found yet another way to mess with
> easy_install's ability to download from their mirrors.  : 
> (  Specifically,
> they are not keeping the dl.sourceforge.net "A" list up-to-date, so
> easy_install's attempts to just use simple round-robin DNS aren't  
> always
> working.  Several IPs in the round robin "A" list are not  
> responding, and
> some new mirrors haven't been added to it.  At this rate, the current
> approach will become unusable in a relatively short timeframe.  :(
>
> It seems as though there is no way to auto-discover the mirrors  
> themselves;
> I had hoped that perhaps a zone transfer on the dl.sourceforge.net  
> zone
> might work to obtain a list of the actual mirrors, but I haven't  
> been able
> to successfully obtain one.
>
> What I'm wondering at this point is if perhaps the only sane thing  
> to do is
> to publish our own mirror list via DNS, so that at least when  
> there's a
> problem it can still be fixed.  The idea would be to replace  
> easy_install's
> current DNS lookup of 'dl.sourceforge.net' IPs with something like
> 'dl.sfmirrors.telecommunity.com' (for example).

That seems like a good idea. One other possibility is if we want to  
future-proof against changes to SF.net's download pages, there could  
be a web service that figures out where to send the user to a file.  
That way, only that service needs to change if they change their  
download page format. That is, of course, a lot heavier of a solution.

Doing the DNS change seems like a good idea.

Kevin