[sword-devel] New Download JSP

[Chris Little]

> > > This looks like a pretty great system.  I tested on x86 Linux Mandrake
6.1
> > > with NS4, Win98 with NS4 and IE5, and Win2K with NS4 and IE5 and did
> > > unzipping with Winzip on windows and unzip on linux.  All worked fine.
> >
> > Thanks for all the test feedback!  That's great!  How about speed?  Did
> > you notice any shortcomings relative to your usual download flow?
>
> Speed is OK.

Speed looks good to me too.  I'm getting about 15k/s transfers which is
pretty average.

> > > I probably still prefer InstallMgr though since I can just set it and
forget
> > > it.
> >
> > Yeah, I agree, but we don't have InstallMgr ported to every platform we
> > support, and not everyone has ftp access.  Maybe we should, instead,
> > focus our efforts on porting InstallMgr and supporting http within the
> > tool.  Not sure.
>
> Did i miss something?  What is InstallMgr?

InstallMgr is the Windows based module installer Troy made a few months ago.
It installs either from a local source like CD-ROM or over a network via FTP
(unfortunately doesn't handle passive connections or http, which makes it
difficult to handle through a firewall).  It also has the nice benefit of
showing you when new or updated modules are available.  The only real
drawback is that the modules are not compressed at all and it hasn't been
ported to Linux.

> > The JSP could be rearranged to allow a user to 'check' the modules that
> > are desired and then have a button that 'posts' to the zip servlet that
> > would then build a zip will ALL selected modules.  This would allow you
> > to 'set it and forget', with the small step of unzipping after the
> > transfer.  Not sure...

This might be an improvement, but it still isn't as nice as InstallMgr which
will do all the installing for me and everything.  There would also be an
issue of transfer interruption if someone decided to download a couple
hundred megs of modules only to have it die two thirds of the way through
transfer.

> > Thanks again for your feedback.  (No comment on my PERL slam?) :)
>
> Perl deserves every slam it gets, and a few it doesn't.  ;-)

oh yeah, sorry I forgot to flame back. :)
PERL is probably the best language for regexes, which is mostly what I've
been using it for in the course of making modules.  It's very simple to
learn and quite likely the best (and best supported on multiple platforms)
language for writing CGI scripts also.  Plus, via CPAN, there's probably
more ready-to-reuse code for PERL than any other language except C.
Languages don't automatically suck just because they aren't compiled . . .
well, except maybe Java. :)

--Chris Little