kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Andrew Lutsenko <anlutsenko@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

I recall we had this discussion before about providing torrent files for
release downloads to reduce the slowdown related to rush traffic. it didn't
go far mainly because of resources needed to maintain separate torrent
seeding infrastructure.

I recently discovered that p2p torrent protocol supports webseeding, a
feature that allows torrent clients to download chunks of files from
standard http/ftp servers. It's implemented by most major torrent client
software. This way the file is initially seeded by the http server but as
more and more peers get the data the swarm takes over most of the traffic
load.

I tried it out and it works nicely with kicad's existing http download
resources so there is no need to have separate infra for torrents!

Would you be open to adding this?
All that is needed is put .torrent files either on kicad website or even
better, on the https://kicad-downloads.s3.cern.ch/ server next to the
installers and add a link to them.

I've generated torrents with webseed information for 5.1.7 here:
https://forum.kicad.info/t/torrents-for-kicad-stable-version-5-1-7-win-and-osx/16609/14?u=qu1ck

To do it yourself in the future is trivial, here is the bash script I used
to create the files:

for f in *.exe ; do
create-torrent "$f" -o $f.torrent --urlList
https://kicad-downloads.s3.cern.ch/windows/stable/
done
for f in *.dmg ; do
create-torrent "$f" -o $f.torrent --urlList
https://kicad-downloads.s3.cern.ch/osx/stable/
done

It depends on create-torrent utility that you can get by running "npm
install -g create-torrent"

I can also make a merge request on the kicad website if someone will upload
the torrent files to the s3 server.

Regards,
Andrew