#338: use of HTTP needs overhauling ---------------------------------+------------------------------------------ Reporter: duncan | Owner: Type: enhancement | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: Component: cabal-install tool | Version: 1.2.3.0 Severity: normal | Keywords: Difficulty: normal | Ghcversion: 6.8.2 Platform: | ---------------------------------+------------------------------------------ We're not using HTTP the protocol or HTTP the package effectively * As I understand it, the HTTP lib buffers the entire http download in memory rather than returning it lazily, so we cannot stream it to disk. It's also all done using `String`. * We do not check (and nor does the HTTP lib) for truncated downloads. That is where the `Content-Length` header differs from the actual length. * We do not cache the ETag so we cannot optimise the case of re- downloading an unchanged index. * We make a new tcp connection for each download, rather than doing all downloads within a single browse session. * We are not doing downloads concurrent with package builds. We should probably use a dedicated thread for downloads. It should serialise downloads and use a single browse session. Even without support for streaming the body directly we could at least write files atomically, checking length header. And also cache the ETag. -- Ticket URL: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/338 Hackage http://haskell.org/cabal/ Hackage: Cabal and related projects