CPAN functionality for python

[Richard Waid]

In article <mailman.982142776.25775.python-list at python.org>, "Oleg
Broytmann" <phd at phd.pp.ru> wrote:

> On Tue, 13 Feb 2001, Doug Hellmann wrote:
>> >    Ok, so we've found one of these 2 or 3 mirrors.
>> >
>> > >     - Each mirror runs a ZEO client program and its own Zope
>> > >     server.
>> >
>> >    What will be these other 1 or 2 mirror sites that will run Zope?
>>
>> Why do you assume no one will run Zope?
> 
>    I didn't assume. I know for sure there are not much Zope
>    installations, and most FTP mirrors will not agree to run Zope for us.

Something that seems to be overlooked here - Zope might not be run by
large numbers of sites, but the sites that do run it are usually by
people fairly keen on Python. I'd suggest that while we might not get
huge numbers of mirrors initially, we'd get _enough_ (at least 1-3
per continent to begin with).

The advantage of Zope is that you could prototype the system quickly and
easily, as well as being an (almost) pure python solution, which just
seems 'right' somehow :)

Has anyone mentioned using XMLRPC to transfer the metadata and requests
around? It would be trivial to leverage that feature with Zope. The
actual transfers could be done out-of-band, using ordinary FTP or HTTP.

I'd suggest that there were two kinds of mirrors - meta data, and actual
data. The actual data could be stored on a regular FTP server, the
metadata could be accessed via XMLRPC from a Zope server. A little like
www.rpmfind.org in a way.

Richard Waid
Network/Software Engineer
http://iopen.co.nz