Re: [GNUnet-developers] Using GNUnet for binary package distribution

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Christian Grothoff <grothoff@in.tum.de> skribis:

> Well, the GNUnet DHT expects that the data source periodically
> refreshes the values by re-issuing the PUT; without that, it cannot
> work.

Sure.

> Furthermore, you need to consider that DHTs are typically only useful
> for small data pieces (think <= 64k), not for large files.  So what
> you'd store in the DHT is the meta data (where to find the large
> files), not the actual files.

Hmm, OK.  I’m concerned that AFS might be too slow and unavailable for
our purposes.

> gnunet-update (svn/gnunet-update/) is a little project where we
> started to work on a GNUnet installer that is supposed to include an
> update mechanism that downloads updates via GNUnet

Sounds nice.

[...]

> Our current approach to package management is essentially to look at
> ldd and grab all dependencies

We could imagine customizing that part for Guix since it already has
finer-grain info.

[...]

> gnunet-update is not yet finished, we're currently planning to revise
> some internal part that gnunet-update will depend on (stream); still,
> help in moving this area along would be of course welcome.

So what would you think of submitting this idea for GSoC?  It might be
more work on the GNUnet side than on the Guix side, AIUI.  Is it too
early?  Would it interfere with work being done by other people?

Thanks for the detailed reply!

Ludo’.