[tex-live] hosting decisions

[Karl Berry]

Back on TeX Live hosting.  Unfortunately it seems opendarwin is not a
viable option, since I've been unable to even get an account so I can
apply for the project.  (You have to put in a mentor username; the guy
who wrote Gerben told me his username to use, but it didn't work, and he
hasn't replied to my queries since.  If it's this hard just to get an
account ...)

So, here is my take on the situation:

If we are switching to CVS right now, then it seems (regrettably)
berlios is preferable to sarovar because it is faster for most TL
developers, network-wise.  But see my closing comment.

If we are not switching to CVS right now, but will in the future, then
I'd like to try to use berlios to track bugs, etc.  That is, ultimately
it seems it will be best if CVS and bugs+ were at the same place.

If we are not switching to CVS, ever, then we might as well use sarovar
for the bug tracking and project admin.

I am agnostic on whether we switch to CVS this year, since time is
passing quickly, but I would like to do so for next year, if not this.
We know that perforce will renew its license for TL this year (and
indefinitely), so we don't have to feel rushed in making a decision.


My biggest concern about berlios is reliability.  I've been using them
for a couple of months for Texinfo, and I don't think there has been a
week without an outage -- usually relatively short, but still.  The one
we experienced during our testing was unusual, in that the web server
was dead; usually it's only CVS, and it's not that the machine itself
completely dies, but rather some configuration issue or another.  Thus,
I do not have warm fuzzy feelings.

CVR, I wonder if you could speak a little about sarovar's CVS uptime?
(Web stuff is relatively unimportant.)

Reliability might trump efficiency, but it's definitely subjective.

k