rsync'able ports tree instead of csup?

[Joachim Rosenfeld]

My usual workflow with the ports tree (and to a lesser extent, /usr/src)
goes something like this:

    1. download ports/src tree from cdrom/ftp site (usually done once)

    2. use csup to update to HEAD

    3. build

The problem is step 2. It takes a very long time for csup to apply the
latest changes from the cvsup servers to the tree, even if my previous
csup session was only the previous day.

IMO, something like rsync would be *way* faster for this task. I know
csup is CVS-tags aware and such, but 99% of the time, I'm just tracking
HEAD.

Would it be a good idea to setup a server that does nothing but
csup/cvsup ports, HEAD, and RELENG_7_0, and make that available via
rsync? It could be done frequently enough (maybe every 15 minutes) such
that most users would be fine with everything but the last 15 minutes.

Has anyone done something like this already?

thanks,
joe