[Catalog-sig] start on static generation, and caching - apache config.

["Martin v. Löwis"]

>> A number of issues should be considered, of course:
>> - there should be a way to get authoritative answers somehow, preferably
>>   from mirrors, but, if necessary, from the main site
> 
> I don't know what you mean.  I envision mirrors as being read-only and
> only used by setuptools. The main site would certainly be authoritative.

The problem is with outdated information. With a mirror, the question
is always "is my information current". Perhaps it's ok for users of
a mirror to use outdated information. However, when people register
a package, then use setuptools to install it, they might be puzzled
that it won't find the package just because it was using an outdated
mirror.

In many cases, it's fine to use outdated information, of course, e.g.
if you know that the package hasn't been released for many weeks now,
or in case you will update the next day again, and then fetch the
newer release.

> Yup. This might be a really nice way to go. It would be especially nice
> if a client could contact PyPI and ask for new data since a given time. 
> I imagine that this request could be as cheap as the requests we have
> now, unless a client was very out of date.

PyPI already supports that: the updated_releases RPC call will return
all packages that have changed since a given date.

Regards,
Martin