Removing cran mirrors

[Hadley Wickham-2]

Hi all,

What's the procedure for removing out of date cran mirrors?  I've just
discovered the fantastic http://cran.r-project.org/mirmon_report.html,
but there 4 mirrors that have not been updated in over a month, and
quite a few others that have a chequered past.  Given that there are
many additional mirrors available, and the poor user experience if a
bad mirror is selected, perhaps these poorly functioning mirrors could
be removed from the list?

Hadley

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[Hadley Wickham-2]

Reading the documentation for mirmon, it also looks like it can output
a machine readable state file.  It would be really useful if this was
published on the r-help page as then we could construct tools to
automatically recommend mirrors based on average age and download
speed.

Hadley

On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 8:54 AM, Hadley Wickham <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> What's the procedure for removing out of date cran mirrors?  I've just
> discovered the fantastic http://cran.r-project.org/mirmon_report.html,
> but there 4 mirrors that have not been updated in over a month, and
> quite a few others that have a chequered past.  Given that there are
> many additional mirrors available, and the poor user experience if a
> bad mirror is selected, perhaps these poorly functioning mirrors could
> be removed from the list?
>
> Hadley
>
> --
> http://had.co.nz/
>

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[Uwe Ligges-3]

Hadley Wickham wrote:

> Reading the documentation for mirmon, it also looks like it can output
> a machine readable state file.  It would be really useful if this was
> published on the r-help page as then we could construct tools to
> automatically recommend mirrors based on average age and download
> speed.
>
> Hadley
>
> On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 8:54 AM, Hadley Wickham <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> What's the procedure for removing out of date cran mirrors?  I've just
>> discovered the fantastic http://cran.r-project.org/mirmon_report.html,
>> but there 4 mirrors that have not been updated in over a month, and
>> quite a few others that have a chequered past.  Given that there are
>> many additional mirrors available, and the poor user experience if a
>> bad mirror is selected, perhaps these poorly functioning mirrors could
>> be removed from the list?

Fritz does that from time to time. Note that this is always rather
cumbersome: trying to contact maintainers whose addresses do not exist
any more and so on.

Best,
Uwe



>> Hadley
>>
>> --
>> http://had.co.nz/
>>
>
>
>

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[Hadley Wickham-2]

> Fritz does that from time to time. Note that this is always rather
> cumbersome: trying to contact maintainers whose addresses do not exist any
> more and so on.

I'd be more draconian - if the mirror doesn't update for two weeks,
just cut it off automatically.  If they want to get back on the list,
it's their problem.  It shouldn't be Fritz's problem!

Hadley


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[Uwe Ligges-3]

Hadley Wickham wrote:
>> Fritz does that from time to time. Note that this is always rather
>> cumbersome: trying to contact maintainers whose addresses do not exist any
>> more and so on.
>
> I'd be more draconian - if the mirror doesn't update for two weeks,
> just cut it off automatically.  If they want to get back on the list,
> it's their problem.  It shouldn't be Fritz's problem!

I fully agree with the latter. Anyway, I fear it is his problem, because
we may also (and particularly) want to keep some mirrors in regions of
the world where connectivity and CRAN bandwitdh is an issue.


Note that with such a policy, half CRAN packages wouldn't work anymore,
because then we'd had "cut off" several packages away that are
dependencies for others etc.
Examples for packages we probably should "cut off" now (since they
already caused too much time looking at them) are:

    clusterfly, ggplot2, lvplot, plyr

all of them giving WARNINGS under R-2.10.0 and I guess you know the
miantiner who has been asked by automatical notification to fix the issues.

Best wishes,
Uwe





> Hadley
>
>

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[Friedrich Leisch]

>>>>> On Tue, 3 Nov 2009 09:46:11 -0600,
>>>>> Hadley Wickham (HW) wrote:

  >> Fritz does that from time to time. Note that this is always rather
  >> cumbersome: trying to contact maintainers whose addresses do not exist any
  >> more and so on.  

  > I'd be more draconian - if the mirror doesn't update for two weeks,
  > just cut it off automatically.  If they want to get back on the list,
  > it's their problem.  It shouldn't be Fritz's problem!

Well, then we would have to create "two classes" of mirrors: If ETH
Zürich goes down I'd prefer to inform Martin Mächler that there is a
problem rather than cutting off automatically (same for a lot of
others).

But note that the list of "monitored mirrors" is a superset of the list
of "listed mirrors": The first real problem mirror.cricyt.edu.ar is not
in the list of mirrors at http://cran.r-project.org/mirrors.html (and
what you get when you are online and select a mirror via GUI). Same
for all the other very bad ones. It is a simple Flag "use mirror" in the
master table, which is used both by R itself and the scripts creating
the webpages (which run fully automated).

Best,
Fritz

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[Hadley Wickham-2]

> Note that with such a policy, half CRAN packages wouldn't work anymore,
> because then we'd had "cut off" several packages away that are dependencies
> for others etc.
> Examples for packages we probably should "cut off" now (since they already
> caused too much time looking at them) are:
>
>   clusterfly, ggplot2, lvplot, plyr
>
> all of them giving WARNINGS under R-2.10.0 and I guess you know the
> miantiner who has been asked by automatical notification to fix the issues.

Hopefully this doesn't sound too self-serving, but:

 * Keeping a mirror up-to-date is _much_ easier than keeping a package
up-to-date (i.e. you just have to run rsync regularly).

 * I don't recall receiving any automated notices about problems, and
I've just tried searching for combinations of R 2.10, warning and
ggplot2 as well as several other attempts and haven't been able to
find anything.  I normally try and keep on top of issues like this.

Hadley

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[Hadley Wickham-2]

> Well, then we would have to create "two classes" of mirrors: If ETH
> Zürich goes down I'd prefer to inform Martin Mächler that there is a
> problem rather than cutting off automatically (same for a lot of
> others).

Oh, good point.

> But note that the list of "monitored mirrors" is a superset of the list
> of "listed mirrors": The first real problem mirror.cricyt.edu.ar is not
> in the list of mirrors at http://cran.r-project.org/mirrors.html (and
> what you get when you are online and select a mirror via GUI). Same
> for all the other very bad ones. It is a simple Flag "use mirror" in the
> master table, which is used both by R itself and the scripts creating
> the webpages (which run fully automated).

Ok, that makes sense.

But would it be possible to make available the resources of the
monitoring script in a machine readable form?  It would be very useful
to help suggest to people what mirror they should use - i.e.
automatically select one that is both fast (for them) and is updated
regularly.

Hadley

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[Uwe Ligges-3]

Hadley Wickham wrote:

>> Note that with such a policy, half CRAN packages wouldn't work anymore,
>> because then we'd had "cut off" several packages away that are dependencies
>> for others etc.
>> Examples for packages we probably should "cut off" now (since they already
>> caused too much time looking at them) are:
>>
>>   clusterfly, ggplot2, lvplot, plyr
>>
>> all of them giving WARNINGS under R-2.10.0 and I guess you know the
>> miantiner who has been asked by automatical notification to fix the issues.
>
> Hopefully this doesn't sound too self-serving, but:
>
>  * Keeping a mirror up-to-date is _much_ easier than keeping a package
> up-to-date (i.e. you just have to run rsync regularly).

Sure, I know.


>  * I don't recall receiving any automated notices about problems, and
> I've just tried searching for combinations of R 2.10, warning and
> ggplot2 as well as several other attempts and haven't been able to
> find anything.  I normally try and keep on top of issues like this.

Great, thank you very much for your efforts. Maybe it has been eaten by
some spam filter (because of auto-generation?). So good chance to start
working on the issues now. ;-)

Best wishes,
Uwe




>
> Hadley
>

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[Hadley Wickham-2]

>>  * I don't recall receiving any automated notices about problems, and
>> I've just tried searching for combinations of R 2.10, warning and
>> ggplot2 as well as several other attempts and haven't been able to
>> find anything.  I normally try and keep on top of issues like this.
>
> Great, thank you very much for your efforts. Maybe it has been eaten by some
> spam filter (because of auto-generation?). So good chance to start working
> on the issues now. ;-)

Found the problem - it's because the subject is the same regardless of
whether or not the package builds without warnings.  I just saw the
emails and ignored them because I thought everything was ok.  Perhaps
the subject line could include WARNING if something went wrong?

Hadley


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[Uwe Ligges-3]

Hadley Wickham wrote:

>>>  * I don't recall receiving any automated notices about problems, and
>>> I've just tried searching for combinations of R 2.10, warning and
>>> ggplot2 as well as several other attempts and haven't been able to
>>> find anything.  I normally try and keep on top of issues like this.
>> Great, thank you very much for your efforts. Maybe it has been eaten by some
>> spam filter (because of auto-generation?). So good chance to start working
>> on the issues now. ;-)
>
> Found the problem - it's because the subject is the same regardless of
> whether or not the package builds without warnings.  I just saw the
> emails and ignored them because I thought everything was ok.  Perhaps
> the subject line could include WARNING if something went wrong?

OK, good point, will change before the next release.

Best wishes,
Uwe

> Hadley
>
>

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