> 3. Why is ghc-tarballs a git repository? That does not seem very wise.
[...]
> Could we have a stable folder under haskell.org/ to put the files in, to
> make sure that they never go away, and just wget/curl them from there?

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.ghc.devel/4883/focus=4887

Hmm, that was a while ago. Whom should I contact to get the files deployed under haskell.org?

Here's a different solution to the 'big binary blobs' problem:

* Keep the ghc-tarballs git repository, and add it as a submodule

* Make sure it doesn't get cloned by default  

git config -f .gitmodules submodule.ghc-tarballs.update none

* Windows developers run (after initial clone --recursive of the ghc repository, one time):

git config submodule.ghc-tarballs.update checkout

git submodule update --depth=1

* After that, windows developers run the normal:

git submodule update

The advantages are:

* only the most recent ghc-tarballs commit gets cloned initially

* subsequent 'git submodule update' runs will make sure always the most recent version of ghc-tarballs is available

* full history of ghc-tarballs is tracked, easier bisecting

* no extra scripts needed

I don't know how much space overhead git adds. wget-ting just the files themselves might still be faster.