 [[title
                 /2.3/ Pick a Default Mirror Location
 ]]

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* You Will Probably Create Many Mirrors

 When you use arch, you will create many *archive mirrors*.

 An archive mirror is a read-only copy of a remote archive.  It
 records a logically consistent snapshot of the remote archive.
 The mirror can be used for read-only purposes as a substitute
 for the remote archive.  A mirror can be efficiently updated
 incrementally.

 Mirrors are a robustness and performance optimization.   They
 improve robustness by encouraging users to replicate core
 data with abandon.  They improve performance by giving each 
 mirror-using client a nearby copy of the data they need.


* Mirrors are a Subset of Archives

  There isn't *much* difference between mirrors and archives.
  An archive mirror looks and behaves much like an ordinary 
  archive.


* Put All Your Mirrors in One Place

  /Best practices advice:/ don't store your mirrors in the same
  place you store your archives.  You'll want to treat your mirrors
  differently in lots of ways (e.g., backup policies).  Keep local
  mirrors and local archives segregated.

  By default, stick all of your mirrors in a single directory.
  Let's pretend that you choose the directory `~/mirrored-archives'.  Then
  this manual assumes that you have run:

  [[tty
    % mkdir ~/mirrored-archives
    % MIRROR_DIR="$(cd ~/mirrored-archives; pwd)"
    % export MIRROR_DIR
  ]]

  In other words, throughout the documentation, examples of shell
  commands (and similar) will use the string `$MIRROR_DIR' to refer to
  a directory in which you create your mirrors of remote archives.

 [[cartouche
   /Don't Be Confused!/

   `tla' does not itself use the environment variable `MIRROR_DIR'.

    The examples in this section use an environment variable so
    that it can be referred to by later sections and to illustrate
    the best-practice that you should designate a default location
    for your archive mirrors.
 ]]


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* Copyright

  Copyright /(C)/ 2005 Tom Lord (`lord@emf.net')

  This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
  it under the terms of the /GNU General Public License/ as published by
  the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
  any later version.

  This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
  but \\/WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY/\\; without even the implied warranty of
  \\/MERCHANTABILITY/\\ or \\/FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE/\\.  See the
  /GNU General Public License/ for more details.

  You should have received a copy of the /GNU General Public License/
  along with this software; see the file <"`COPYING'" --
  $/COPYING.html>.  If not, write to the Free Software Foundation, 675
  Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

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 [[null
   ; arch-tag: Tom Lord Thu Mar 24 13:30:04 2005 (my/mirrorloc.txt)
 ]]
