On Wed, Sep 05, 2018 at 02:58:17PM +0200, Philipp Kern wrote: > On 2018-09-05 12:35, Wouter Verhelst wrote: [...] > > I disagree with that, but I do also agree that it would be preferable if > > local proxies or mirrors were used preferably. > > > > However, this shouldn't be done by way of manual configuration; instead, > > I think it should be done by way of autodetection performed by apt, > > something not unlike the proxy-PAC scheme, where a browser looks for > > pac.<domain>, with the <domain> part being what was passed to it by > > DHCP, incrementally dropping off the leaf-most part of that until it > > resolves. > > > > I think such a scheme could work for apt too. > > Arguably the correct way would be to fetch the PAC and execute it to > determine the proxy for the host. Of course that'd require interpreting > Javascript.
Not what I meant (but I certainly could've been clearer). Autodetecting a proxy using the WPAD scheme is complicated, and I agree that adding a Javascript interpreter to apt just so we can figure out where a proxy can be found is probably way overkill. It might be nice, but I don't think we should do it. However, it would be nice if a network administrator could somehow suggest a closeby *mirror*. That's why I said "something not unlike" in the above quote. Since this'd be something we'd be creating ourselves, we can decide that no scripting language would be necessary, but instead just a simple configuration file that says "if you're looking for a mirror for something of which the Release file has fields matching <xyz>, please go to <URL>". -- Could you people please use IRC like normal people?!? -- Amaya Rodrigo Sastre, trying to quiet down the buzz in the DebConf 2008 Hacklab