Downloading Caching Support

[Michael]

( From the trondheim-pts mailing list: http://phoronix-test-suite.com/piper...ay/000005.html )

Following the 0.5.1 release this morning, download caching support for the Phoronix Test Suite has been pushed into the git tree (http://www.phorogit.com/index.php?p=...test-suite.git). This caching support is ideal for users with multiple systems or for users just wishing to backup their downloaded files in order to save bandwidth in the future.

By running "phoronix-test-suite make-download-cache", it will copy all files downloaded locally by the Phoronix Test Suite and places them inside *~/.phoronix-test-suite/download-cache* by default. However, you can override this location using the DOWNLOAD_CACHE environmental variable. By running DOWNLOAD_CACHE=~/downloads/ phoronix-test-suite make-download-cache it will save the files to ~/downloads/ and likewise if running DOWNLOAD_CACHE=~/downloads/ phoronix-test-suite install universe, it will use this custom directory for obtaining files previously downloaded. It's hooked in where if the file can be found in the cache and its MD5 sum is verified, it will just copy that file instead of downloading it from the Internet. Running make-download-cache on an existing cache will just update the files where the MD5s have changed or where the files were previously not downloaded.

This feature relies upon the recent downloads.xml introduction for the test profiles, in order to manage the download URLs and MD5 check-sums. In addition, through the downloads.xml file it can determine what files have been downloaded (instead of files in turn being extracted from a downloaded file or created by one of the test scripts).

Previously you could have (and still could) just copied the ~/.phoronix-test-suite/installed-tests/ directory to another PC or backup medium, but I don't view that as a viable. In the copying process some files could be corrupted, file permissions changed, and it would just take immensely longer to do since everything is then being copied. Here if you just make the download cache and then copy the resulting directory to another test system, it's just the downloaded and compressed files, so it takes up less room, is a much cleaner process, and eliminates many headaches.

Michael