[Catalog-sig] Proposal: Move PyPI static data to the cloud for better availability

["Martin v. Löwis"]

> As Martin von Löwis said, this already exists.
> "a.mirrors.pypi.python.org <http://a.mirrors.pypi.python.org> and
> b.mirrors.pypi.python.org <http://b.mirrors.pypi.python.org> are already
> there and could be used by clients". Maybe Martin can you explain us
> (apologies if this is already done somewhere) how things are working
> from now ? Is this possible to rely on the existing work rather than
> using a cloud system ? What's the in place infrastructure ?

Primarily, client support is missing: i.e. distutils won't fall back 
from one mirror to the next.

As a minor issue, the download stats collection is also not implemented yet.

As for timeliness: it would be reasonable to setup the mirrors so that 
they won't be behind more than one minute (by polling for changes every 
minute). On the one hand, some people claim that this would be much too 
frequent, and that 10 minutes or more would be frequent enough. Others 
claim that changes should be propagated instantaneously. This would also 
be possible (given that the master knows the list of all mirrors),
but would need to be implemented as well.

Regards,
Martin