[m-dev.] Hosting for Mercury downloads

[Paul Bone]

On Thu, Sep 17, 2015 at 11:10:04AM +1000, Zoltan Somogyi wrote:
> 
> 
> On Thu, 17 Sep 2015 10:27:01 +1000 (AEST), Julien Fischer <jfischer at opturion.com> wrote:
> > > So my questions are, do we need to keep months/years of ROTDs?  Do we need
> > > to keep them online or is archiving them in our homes/offices good enough?
> > 
> > My suggestion would be as follows:
> > 
> > We should aim to keep the last 6 months to a year's worth of ROTDs online.
> 
> I agree with that.

Okay cool, I'm also happy with that so I think that's enough consensus for a
decision.  What I'll do next is measure how much storage both 6 and 12
months of ROTD storage is and see what seems best then.

> > For older ROTDs, the only ones that are worth keeping online are those
> > that affect our ability to bootstrap the compiler from the last stable
> > release.  IMO, anything else can be archived offline.  (The discussion of
> > *how* it should be archive is a separate one.)
> 
> For rotds, yes. For releases, the older ones should be online as well.

Agreed.

> > > As it is there is very little pre-2012 online.  If anyone requests something
> > > pre-2012 I may have it on a hard disk in my wardrobe and can retrieve it.
> > 
> > I have no problem archiving the pre-2012 stuff.  I cannot ever remember anyone
> > requesting it anyway. (Beyond a certain point it gets quite difficult to
> > build old ROTDs anyway, unless you happen to be using an OS / C compiler of
> > a similar vintage.)
> 
> I actually had a need for old releases for a paper I was writing three years ago,
> but came up against both the problem Julien mentioned, and another problem:
> the older a Mercury release, the less likely it is to be able to compile Mercury code
> that was written recently, due to the addition of new features and the fixing of
> old bugs. Nevertheless, I think it is important that the old releases, at least, should
> be available *somewhere*, and if feasible, a selection of old rotds (something
> like weekly or monthly) as well. I am also willing (and would like) to hold these
> archival copies. I am also willing to help pay for the servers.
> 

I needed to go back to 2009 while preparing Chapter 3 of my thesis.  It was
a PITA.  Mostly the problem was finding the specific versions (by date) that
I wanted, and then getting it bootstrapped.

Regarding archiving, there's no harm in several of us keeping an archive.  I
think it also makes sense for Zoltan to hold the "official" archive (project
founder etc).  I have the means to also keep an offline or low-availablility
online archive so I think doing so makes sense.

Regarding server costs, what I've been considering doing is to track
expenses, making it very clear how money is used, and then ask other
developers/the community to donate.  If desired we can do this in a more
formal manner, as a legal entity with membership fees (but not a charity).
Does anyone see a need for that at the moment?  We last discussed this idea
in Jaurary 2013.

Cheers.


-- 
Paul Bone