[
Date Prev][
Date Next][
Thread Prev][
Thread Next][
Date Index][
Thread Index]
[
List Home]
|
Re: [cross-project-issues-dev] Download stats and p2
|
Before I respond to Martin's question, I'd like to apologize to the p2
team. While the suggested solution may have been a hack (unintended
behaviour) in the update manager, it really is a purpose-designed
feature in p2. It is hardly a "hack". I have added a section to the
"Equinox p2 Getting Started for Releng" page [1] that describes the
"Artifacts.xml mapping rule change".
Onto the response...
I believe that the list of mirrors sent to p2 *does not* include
eclipse.org (I may be incorrect) so we won't have even enough data to
base an approximation upon. We are leaning very heavily on our mirrors
for this release (we are not adding any additional bandwidth).
The concern with using server logs from mirrors is that the best we can
hope for is an approximation of what's really happening.
It is doubtful that all mirrors will participate. If only a couple of
the major mirrors do not participate, our numbers will be woefully
incorrect. Mirrors come and go, which would make maintaining an accurate
approximation challenging.
We anticipate hat none of our major mirror providers will consent to
providing us with their data. I may, for example, be able to convince
the good folks at the University of Waterloo to hand it over; I might be
able to convince them to set up some kind of job to do it on a regular
basis. However, I am skeptical that they actually will.
You should also keep in mind that these organizations provide mirrors
for many sites. Even if they do decide to hand it over, we will likely
find ourselves buried in irrelevant log data.
I am willing to try approaching one or two of the mirror providers to
see how feasible this is, but I am not hopeful.
FWIW, I haven't heard anything on this topic after the board meeting
this week. Hopefully tomorrow, I'll get some feedback to see how big a
deal this really is.
Wayne
[1]http://wiki.eclipse.org/Equinox_p2_Getting_Started_for_Releng
Oberhuber, Martin wrote:
Hi Wayne et al,
I'd like to ask back regarding option (1) from your E-Mail,
direct download stats from the web and ftp servers' access
logs on Eclipse.org (and those mirrors who happen to give them
to us).
I'm assuming that for download.eclipse.org such logs already
exist, and recalling Denis' excited "shooting for 1 Mio
downloads now" blog or similar in previous years, I'm further
assuming that at least for Eclipse.org the analysis is not
that bad.
Going for the server logs gives the most accurate data at
zero impact for the release itself. I'm not a web guy, but
I do assume that tools exist for analyzing those access logs.
Why not just go and ask some of the mirrors and see who is
willing to collaborate?
But perhaps that is happening already, the stats are being
prepared but details are confidential for strategic members
only [some small reward for strategic membership]... while
some aggregate numbers are shared with the Community...
Cheers,
--
Martin Oberhuber, Senior Member of Technical Staff, Wind River
Target Management Project Lead, DSDP PMC Member
http://www.eclipse.org/dsdp/tm
-----Original Message-----
From: cross-project-issues-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:cross-project-issues-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Wayne Beaton
Sent: Freitag, 12. Juni 2009 20:51
To: cross project issues
Subject: [cross-project-issues-dev] Download stats and p2
Greetings all. We have a small problem. Actually, I guess that the
problem is as big as you choose to decide it is...
The Eclipse Foundation tracks downloads that go through the
download.php
script:
http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=[...]
This includes things like the packages and direct downloads
provided by
projects (assuming that everybody is using the script in
their download
links).
Downloads that occur through p2 do not go through this
script. They go
directly to our download server and to our mirrors. The
mirrors do not
(and arguably cannot reasonably) provide us with download stats.
So... if somebody, for example, downloads the "Eclipse IDE for PHP
Developers" we will know that we have one more download of
PDT. If they
instead download the "Eclipse IDE for Java Developers" and
then use p2
to add PDT to their configuration, we currently do not have
any way of
tracking that download of PDT.
Inability to accurately track downloads is a huge concern for the
Eclipse Board.
We have explored several mechanisms for tracking this download.
Unfortunately, we've not been holding these conversations as
publicly as
I'd like, so I'll summarize them briefly below...
1. Get mirrors to give us their download stats. We could ask.
But most
will not give them to us. Besides, their logs probably contain
information about everything they mirror, which will be way more
information than we need. And it'll be a heck of a lot of information
for our webmasters to weed through.
2. Add a plug-in that gathers information from p2 post
install and send
that information to eclipse.org. Effectively, this is a call-home
mechanism that will require some additional UI elements and
considerable
effort awfully late in our development cycle. Ultimately, it will
require some kind of opt-in from the user; many of whom will refuse
leaving us with incomplete data. FWIW, we could use the UDC for this,
but it has the same problem.
3. All p2 downloads go through eclipse.org. Denis is
concerned that the
download.php script and--to some degree--the rest of our
infrastructure
will not be able to scale to handle the value that can
potentially come
from p2 downloads. FWIW, we're not increasing our bandwidth
for Galileo;
instead, we're depending very heavily on mirrors.
Bug 239668 [1] has been open for some time to discuss this issue.
We've decided that the best approach is something that we've been
calling the "Single File Hack". In this hack, we configure the p2
metadata (artifacts.xml) to send requests for some small
subset of the
files to eclipse.org. Ideally, we send requests for one plug-in or
feature for each thing that we need to track. The number of
files needs
to be kept relatively small.
There are problems with this hack. For one, eclipse.org
becomes a single
point of failure for all downloads. Further, we will have to let
organizations that mirror our downloads for internal consumption know
how to turn it off.
What we're going to need from each project is the names of the files
that we need to be tracking.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic.
Wayne
[1]https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=239668
_______________________________________________
cross-project-issues-dev mailing list
cross-project-issues-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/cross-project-issues-dev
_______________________________________________
cross-project-issues-dev mailing list
cross-project-issues-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/cross-project-issues-dev
