One thing I've noticed some time ago, is that when we need a couple
of distfiles, we try to fetch them all sequentially. Well, that's fine,
but I want to suggest something about how distfiles are handled which
originate from the same site. (No idea how doable that is :)

At current we fetch each file from a list of files, and try a list of
(potentially different) servers for each file. My suggestion now is
to order the list of files by the sets of master-sites they try, and
lookup if anything is outstanding to be fetched from the same server,
and get that from the same server by doing the appropriate 'cd's, and
the 'get' instead of closing connection and connecting over again to
the (same) server to start from beginning.

This would (i suppose) cost a few cycles on the client end, but it also
would reduce "spam" significantly...

df := distfile
rs := resource-site

df1 on rs1 rs2 rs3  <-- ordered
df2 on rs2 rs3 rs4  <-- by master
df3 on rs4 rs7 rs9  <-- sort ?
df4 on rs2 rs1 rs3

now: 
   o fetch df1 from (rs's - starting rs1) (bye) then
   o fetch df2 from (rs's - starting rs2) (bye) then
   o fetch df3 from (rs's - starting rs4) (bye) then
   o fetch df3 from (rs's - starting rs2) (bye)

proposed:
   o sort df-list by memq of own rs in other rs and potentially resort rs (needed ?)
   o loop over: try start df on (rs), if success then
   o loop over: search other df gettable from current rs, if found then get that df
     then (bye)

let's say it finds df1 on rs2, then it would try (without logout and ignoring all
the other rs on other dfs) to get df2 and df4 from there (or df4 first as the
original list had rs2 earlier ... who cares ... *duck*).

Hmm, I hope that was not too confusing ? :) I think that you might
say that this is only a cosmetic change ... on the other hand I often
watch a LOT of potential rs running through my terminal/log where a file
is not found, just to end up at the 10th where I got a preceeding df from...

And yes, as I said, that I suppose would burn "some" more cycles, but I don't think
it's massive - just convenient.

Fine, and now you may beat me :)

Regards,

-Martin