[Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Extending activity microformat spec to include optional olpc_activity_size

[Daniel Drake]

On 29 November 2010 03:06, Bernie Innocenti <bernie at codewiz.org> wrote:
> If the size were only needed at download time, then there would be no
> need to perform a separate query: the size is already present in
> Content-Length header.
>
> I think Anish wants to know the size beforehand to show it in the list
> of update candidates.

OK. If it's really important to save 1-2 seconds of update time (on a
download thats then going to take probably more than a minute, perhaps
substantially more) I'd suggest just dropping this part.

> The schoolserver could cache the xo bundles. In Paraguay, this wasn't
> happening for the largest ones due to size limits in the default
> configuration of Squid. So we increased the maximum size for .xo.

This would suggest that the size query time is really fast then, no
need to change the microformat. No?

> True, but distributing the bundles *to* the schoolservers is still on a
> do-it-yourself basis, with rsync scripts, cronjobs, puppet and all the
> associated complexity.

Yet this is well documented and widely implemented practice. (There
isn't another present day option that scales)

> In the real world, most bundle downloads will probably come from sources
> other than the deployment HQ. Think of Doom & Super Vampire Ninja Zero!
> So the generic HTTP caching offered by squid is probably going to be a
> better use of the school's bandwidth and disk space.

But these activities aren't covered by the updater, right?
The only ones that get covered in these queries would be the ones
listed on the deployment-controlled activity group.
Or is something changing?

Daniel