Friendly warning on downloading RPMs :)

[Stephan Wilms]

Hi Joel,

> We have been watching the ftp logs this morning and we noticed
> that more than one person has to be retrieving WAY more than
> they need.

Interesting problem you have there. This shows you how eager people are 
to get as much of RTEMS as possible :-)

> I did some quick checks and JUST on the sparc:
>   Required:   8,452,948 bytes
>   Likely:     2,552,851 bytes
>   Not Likely: 7,943,419 bytes

Hmmm, how about making it easier (and more obvious) for the users: put 
the "required" and "likely" stuff into 1 (ONE) package called "BASIC" 
and all the other stuff into 1 (ONE) additional package called 
something like "OPTIONAL". Add clear hints as to which host and targte 
type the packages address. Nowadays those package sizes of around 10 MB 
shouldn't be too big for professionals who need the stuff for their 
work.

Personally I find the long lists of RPM files in the FTP directories 
very confusing. The (IMHO) *best* solution would be direct download 
links on the WEB site with good explanations right above. That should 
make things a lot clearer than simply have to wade through huge trees 
on the FTP site. I am thinking along the lines of texts like this (just 
to illustrate my point):

   The BASIC package of prebuilt RTEMS developement
    tools for a Linux host and an i386 target:
       <<detailed list of package contents>>
       <<Linux installation instructions>>
       <<download the package (12MB)>>

    The OPTIONAL package of prebuilt RTEMS developement
    tools for a Linux host and an i386 target (please
    check whether you really need this):
       <<detailed list of package contents>>
       <<download the package (12MB)>>

Where the "<< ... >>" indicate links to descriptive texts or direct 
downloads respectively. Something like that anyway. Right above the 
list or table of downloads would be a good place for describing the 
general concept of prebuilt binaries. Other concepts might be to have 
one basic page for the general concept ond one subpage per supported 
host system, etc.

> That means that over 1/2 of what you download is not
> needed to build RTEMS or most applications.

Well, I have not (yet) been hit by this problem because I am still a 
fan of actually building the tools myself from the source. Especially 
since this works very well with 4.5.0 

> On top of that, we are seeing people retrieve the entire
> set of RPMS for all targets.  I doubt anyone needs
> every language for every target.  This means you
> would have downloaded 175 MBYTES instead of 10-17Mbytes.

WOW ! Some people must have really fast and cheap internet access and a 
lot of patience. Maybe someone is trying to mirror you ?

Greetings,

--
Stephan Wilms (stephan.wilms at cwa.de) 
CWA-GmbH, Aachen, Germany