community/gsoc/project_ideas/apt_ftpfs: Initial version from IRC discussion.

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+[[meta copyright="Copyright © 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc."]]
+
+[[meta license="""[[toggle id="license" text="GFDL 1.2+"]][[toggleable
+id="license" text="Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
+document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
+any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant
+Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.  A copy of the license
+is included in the section entitled
+[[GNU_Free_Documentation_License|/fdl]]."]]"""]]
+
+[[meta title="Have Debian's apt use ftpfs"]]
+
+\#hurd [[IRC]] channel, 2009-03-13.
+
+    <tschwinge> By the way: I had another GSoC idea:
+    <tschwinge> (a) make ftpfs / httpfs unsable enough for...
+    <tschwinge> (b) have Debian's apt / whetever not use a direct ftp / http
+      connection, but instead use /ftp/ftp.debian.org/whatever etc.
+    <tschwinge> (c) Make unionfs unsable enough, so that it can be used
+      together with nfs (or whatever) to sarve as a cache for /ftp/.
+    <antrik> uhm... you mean all of this as a single GSoC project?
+    <antrik> indeed I have the intention of turning ftpfs/httpfs into something
+      that can be used by other tools instead of a library
+    <antrik> but that requires them to grow completely new interfaces, making
+      them suitable for interactive use
+    <antrik> you are right though that this would be a nice GSoC project... no
+      idea why I never thought of it in this context
+    <tschwinge> I think I proposed this idea already some months ago on some
+      mailing list.
+    <tschwinge> I don't think it's too much work.
+    <tschwinge> Or why do you think?
+    <antrik> it is considerable work
+    <antrik> it requires implementing a non-trivial, directory based FS
+      interface
+    <tschwinge> (c), OK, but why (a) and (b)?
+    <antrik> also, I'd probably reimplement them on top of libcurl... no need
+      to maintain our own wheels :-)
+    <tschwinge> That for sure, yes.  But for starterst, we can just take ftpfs
+      as it is.
+    <antrik> I think I explained the issues in some past discussion, though I
+      don't remember where it was
+    <tschwinge> And just teach apt to open /ftp/... instead of calling whatever
+      function to retrieve a ftp file.
+    <antrik> you want progress tracking for one
+    <antrik> you want the client to see redirects
+    <antrik> (OK, that might not be necessary for apt-get... it would be
+      necessary for other use cases like a web browser, though)
+    <antrik> you want proper error handlin
+    <tschwinge> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.os.hurd.bugs/16575/focus=16795
+    <antrik> none of this can be expressed by opening a single virtual file
+    <antrik> it would require adding a completely new interface, either using
+      custom RPCs, or a directory with several virtual files for various
+      aspects of the interaction
+    <antrik> (I prefer the latter variant, though I guess some people would
+      argue in favour of the former :-) )
+    <antrik> anyways, I'll add it to the list
+    <tschwinge> OK, I see.  Nevertheless, don't you think that a more simple
+      implementation of my idea (also leaving out (c) for now) wouldn't be a
+      suitable GSoC project?
+    <antrik> apt-get is probably quite a good example use case for this, so you
+      are probably right that it would be useful to develop this together
+    <antrik> (I'll leave out (c) though -- I would consider it a distinct
+      project. we can place a followup task once (a)+(b) is done :-) )
+    <tschwinge> Yes, sure.