[Interest] strip: Customise Qt intaller, remove *.qt.io

[Jake Petroules]

> On Sep 28, 2017, at 2:30 PM, Michael Corcoran <michael.corcoran at outlook.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Christian,
> 
> I wonder if this is something you could achieve with a script that modifies behaviour of the official Qt installer? I have used it to automatically select desired components and install location before (https://github.com/d-ronin/dRonin/blob/next/make/scripts/qt-install.qs and running Qt installer with an extra flag: --script $(ROOT_DIR)/make/scripts/qt-install.qs, apologies in advance for lack of comments). Docs are reasonably good http://doc.qt.io/qtinstallerframework/. You'd have to dig through docs to see if you can change the source URLs etc.
> 
> Out of curiosity, which mirror does the Qt installer select for you? For me it chooses one in Japan, which is quite a long way away by internet thus very slow (e.g. ~100 kiB/s). I've often preferred to download Qt offline installers from a US West-coast mirror instead (Southern Cross Cable is the only big cable out of NZ, and goes direct to Australia and California).

We recently added a Berkeley, CA (US West Coast) mirror thanks to the University of California, Berkeley: http://mirrors.ocf.berkeley.edu/qt/

Connection speed should be extremely fast (20 Mbps for me from San Francisco, which is even faster than local AWS CDNs), does that work any better for you? The Japanese mirrors are between 2.5 and 5 MB for me which is not terrible despite the distance, and CA is about as far from Japan as NZ is, so maybe Berkeley can give you an acceptable speed.

If not, I'd suggest reaching out to a large AU or NZ university which has an existing Open Source software mirroring site (as many large universities do) and ask them to mirror. In my experience they are often more than happy to.

> 
> Kai,
> Rather than a new mirror it might be sufficient to just alter the automatic selection to use California for New Zealand clients (I'm unsure how it works/how feasible that is)?

We use MaxMind GeoIP commercial database for IP address geolocation, and it selects the best mirror based on that. Not sure of the particulars beyond that or how easy/possible it is to "override" things like that.

It's not always a very reliable system in general, since I for example get a mirror on the US East Coast despite Berkeley being a 20-minute drive from me, because my IP has the wrong location in that DB.

However, if we know that NZ is only physically connected to Australia and California then it might indeed make sense to hardcode the Berkeley mirror for NZ users.

> 
> Regards,
> Mike
> ________________________________________
> From: Interest <interest-bounces+michael.corcoran=outlook.com at qt-project.org> on behalf of Kai Koehne <Kai.Koehne at qt.io>
> Sent: Thursday, 28 September 2017 10:40 p.m.
> To: Christian Gagneraud; interest at qt-project.org
> Subject: Re: [Interest] strip: Customise Qt intaller, remove *.qt.io
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Interest [mailto:interest-bounces+kai.koehne=qt.io at qt-project.org]
>> On Behalf Of Christian Gagneraud
>> Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2017 9:29 AM
>> To: interest at qt-project.org
>> Subject: [Interest] strip: Customise Qt intaller, remove *.qt.io
>> 
>> Hi there,
>> 
>> I would like to customise the Qt installer, not only by adding new
>> "resources", but i would like to disable some/most "*.qt.io"
>> resources.
>> 
>> The reason for removing qt.io are multiples:
>> - From New Zealand, the Qt installer spends 5 to 10 minutes to fetch "*.qt.io"
>> stuff, and i'm getting tired of it (blame NZ, unfortunately), and i think it is
>> unacceptable for my potential users (co-workers).
>> [...]
>> PS: I have a Qt license, could this be useful on that topic?
> 
> Please also raise this with Qt Support then. Maybe we just have to add another mirror in the region then.
> 
> Regards
> 
> Kai
> _______________________________________________
> Interest mailing list
> Interest at qt-project.org
> http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/interest
> _______________________________________________
> Interest mailing list
> Interest at qt-project.org
> http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/interest

-- 
Jake Petroules - jake.petroules at qt.io
The Qt Company - Silicon Valley
Qbs build tool evangelist - qbs.io