Date: Mon, 22 Apr 1996 09:37:41 +0200 (IST) From: Eli Zaretskii To: naderr AT topaz DOT cqu DOT edu DOT au Cc: Stewart McDonald , djgpp AT delorie DOT com Subject: Re: Djgpp in australia? In-Reply-To: <199604220654.QAA00172@linuxbox.nse.com.au> Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Mon, 22 Apr 1996, root wrote: > archie.au://micros/pc/oak/vendors/djgpp > > If you want to find a piece of software, a very qwel avenue to > take is: email archie AT archie DOT au (or whatever archie you please, > I use archie.rutgers.edu beacuse it is more comprehensive) ... and Archie is not really helpful (IMHO) in finding large packages such as DJGPP. It really shines if you are looking for a specific file, because you can then judge how good the hit is by looking at the date of the file that archie returns. So if you know that DJGPP includes gcc272b.zip, you can use archie to find the latest copy. However, if you ask archie to look for "djgpp", in general you'll be in deep trouble: most of the hits will be hopelessly out of date old versions, and the timestamp of the directory (djgpp is a directory) is not really helpful. Also, most archie servers leave much to be desired in their update policy, and you must know the various servers quite intimately to decide which one to use. For instance, how would an innocent user know that the rutgers server is better? (And btw, if you want to see one of the best, try the one from Austria, archie.univie.ac.at.) And of course, if you are after the latest version of some hottest software, don't use archie at all, because the best servers only update their databases once in a month; many don't do even that much.