Unique Piece Numbering

[Cameron Dale]

Hi,

Here's a bit of a status/plans update for those who are interested.

With the recent release of the DebTorrent program in binary package
form, the initial 4 steps that were planned for this project have been
completed. (See the wiki for the original plan:
http://wiki.debian.org/DebTorrent)

The next two major projects for the DebTorrent program are to improve
the communication with APT, and to introduce long-lived torrents for
the constantly updated testing and unstable suites.

The plans for the first project, improving the communication with APT,
are documented on a wiki page:

http://wiki.debian.org/DebTorrent/AptInteraction

There are 4 non-exclusive proposals for this plan. The first (proposal
A, implementing HTTP/1.1 pipelining) has already been completed and
seems to work well, though it's not in the svn trunk yet (see the
"http1.1" svn branch if you're interested). The other proposals are
more complicated, as they require changes to the APT code.

I have just completed the plans for the second project, introducing
long-lived torrents using unique piece numbers, on another wiki page:

http://wiki.debian.org/DebTorrent/UniquePieces

It's quite long as there are a lot of details to be worked out, but
here are some highlights. The torrents are controlled by a new file
containing unique piece numbering information, which when combined
with the current Packages file, can be used to create the long-lived
torrent. These new files (currently called Packages-torrent files)
need to be updated whenever the archive is (currently twice a day for
testing/unstable). I have written a couple of scripts to do this,
which now update the files seen here:

http://debian.camrdale.org/debtorrent/

All that is left is to make the required changes in the DebTorrent
program to read these files, and use them as described in the wiki
page. (I say "all", but it's a lot of work.) If you're interested, the
work will be going on in the "unique" svn branch.

That's all for now, if you have any questions/comments please ask them
here or add them to the wiki pages. I thrive on feedback!

Cameron