[Catalog-sig] PyPI replication project

["Martin v. Löwis"]

> Mirrors help every other packaging system.  So it stands to reason
> that it would help pypi too.  I think since many zope people have been
> using mirrors instead of using pypi directly... pypi has been more
> available.  It's running lots better for other reasons too... but less
> load is probably also nice for pypi :)

I'm fine with people operating their own mirrors. I just don't think
it can be made *invisible* to users that they use a mirror. In the
mirroring systems for Linux distributions, for example, people have
to explicitly select which mirror they want to use (and accept that
the mirror may lag behind by a day or so). It's also clear that it is
a "mere" mirror.

What Andreas was asking how a distributed PyPI installation could work,
by which I assume he was asking for one that a) is invisible (of called
misleadingly "transparent") to users, and b) allows updates to replica.

I'm skeptical that such an system would work all that well, and can
be created in a reasonable amount of time.

Regards,
Martin