Re: git: 0882d238e9b4 - main - Mk/bsd.sites.mk: Update GENTOO entries

On Mon, Mar 20, 2023 at 09:02:18AM +0100, Daniel Engberg wrote:
> Hi,

Hi, and thanks for elaborate reply Daniel.  It would have made a better
commit log if parts of this text were in it. :)

> At least the first 2 were dead and/or didn't connect from different
> locations at time I decided to redo the list based on
> https://www.gentoo.org/downloads/mirrors/. I tried to determine and use
> sites that have as good connectivity and speed for all regions, both
> LeaseWeb and Rackspace services in multiple and from my test locations
> (different regions) they performed overall well.

Fair enough.  Mirrors do come and go and must be curated, but mixing
dead and "bad" ones together makes it hard to assess these changes in
retrospect.  Ideally we should be able to track any particular mirror
via commit logs, esp. because sometimes they are not totally gone, but
moved from rotation temporarily, change ISP, colocation, etc.

> In theory there isn't anything wrong with unofficial ones however such
> hosts may not be as actively monitored for health and consistency
> (being in sync) and from what I've seen and looked at feedback in
> general it's not desirable list such hosts unless needed.

This part I don't understand.  If a mirror lacks some distfile, the
next one would be used.  Both Yandex and 163.com might not be official
but are very popular in their regions of the world (and often broader).

> The rest of the hosts were selected based on of peering, speed, and
> regional location.

From where?  First-world internet may give you quite skewed results.

> Connectivity issues and not overall transfer speed for "single/few"
> hosts is something that's out of scope for the ports tree and needs to
> be addressed by the user(s). To answer your question regarding
> mirrors.163.com the reason is simply because there are better options
> overall and .cn mirrors are in the majority of times very slow to hosts
> outside of China (Rackspace lists a node in HK fwiw).

You could've very well simply moved it downwards if you don't like it,
but then again, there are FreeBSD users in China, what about them?

> Most of tree overall have single hosts listed and afterwards relies on
> FreeBSD's infrastructure so I presume that you have a lot more issues
> with the tree overall than just a handful of ports.

I have no issues with the ports tree, I just have shitty internet, and
that's why I like to have a plethora of mirrors.

> I think we can safely say that if 8 hosts in different regions, ASNs etc
> fails your host has more issues than the amount of mirrors we provide,
> in fact the vast majority of ports actually provides fewer mirrors than
> that including FreeBSD's infrastructure.

That's beyond my point, which is: more mirrors is better than less.  But
oh well, I guess I could always put some extra MASTER_SITE_GENTOO in my
/etc/make.conf.

./danfe