Debtorrent

This feature request was first discussed on the Trisquel forums at [1].

The idea is to include Debtorrent [2] in the default install of future versions of Trisquel, and for the current Trisquel mirrors to act as trackers for packages distributed via Debtorrent. It could also be enabled as the default source for APT to obtain packages.

This would result in vastly reduced bandwidth loads for the Trisquel mirrors, with minimal impact on end users. And since the Debtorrent protocol automatically falls back to HTTP when bittorrent is blocked or not working, there will be no risk of inaccessibility.

There should be no security risk in making this change, as packages would still have to be signed by Trisquel in order to be accepted by APT clients.

Debtorrent already works on Trisquel 6.0, and a few users have installed it, but there are currently no trackers available for use. I propose that trackers are set up on the Trisquel mirrors asap. That way, current supporters can test the protocol and find any potential problems before its introduction in some future version of Trisquel, hopefully as the default. I'd imagine (though I haven't checked) that the mirror maintainers would be in favor of something like this, as although it would require slightly more effort to set up the tracker, it would vastly reduce their bandwidth requirements as package updates would essentially be p2p with http being used only as a fallback.

I can't see any downsides to this...