Prohibitively slow download in Qt Setup
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@jsulm said in Prohibitively slow download in Qt Setup:
Would be good to have it directly in the installer together with a list of mirrors.
Definitely agree.
It took them years to even implement command-line mirror selection (see https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTIFW-441, https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTIFW-1164), so it will be years more before I expect to see a selectable list.
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For others, run the installer like this:
C:\Downloads>qt-unified-windows-x64-4.4.1-online.exe --mirror https://mirrors.ocf.berkeley.edu/qt/From 2 days, down to 20 minutes:
I used this mirror list below:
https://download.qt.io/static/mirrorlist/I think the mirror list linked from the Wiki is actually intended for use with the "Repositories" list above, since the URLs are all pointing to the Updates.xml which is what it looks for when you hit "Test".
Yeah this must be addressed in the installer UI. It's an impediment to using Qt especially now that (1) there are no offline installers for open source licenses and (2) the open source license is intended to encourage always developing on the latest Qt. I can remember this being an issue for me (I'm in Australia) a decade ago and my team was complaining then as well. Currently the solution is too difficult to discover.
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@Jarrod said in Prohibitively slow download in Qt Setup:
I can remember this being an issue for me (I'm in Australia) a decade ago and my team was complaining then as well. Currently the solution is too difficult to discover.
So you & your team is still in Australia? Or which mirror gave you the slow download?
I remember we've been trying to get a local mirror there, but didn't succeed :/
Director R&D, The Qt Company
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@Jarrod said in Prohibitively slow download in Qt Setup:
I can remember this being an issue for me (I'm in Australia) a decade ago and my team was complaining then as well. Currently the solution is too difficult to discover.
So you & your team is still in Australia? Or which mirror gave you the slow download?
I remember we've been trying to get a local mirror there, but didn't succeed :/
@kkoehne Yes still in Australia.
It was slow for me just now when running the installer with the defaults, so I'm not sure which one it chose. But QTIFW-441 says it was defaulting to China for Australian IPs: https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTIFW-441.
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@Jarrod said in Prohibitively slow download in Qt Setup:
I can remember this being an issue for me (I'm in Australia) a decade ago and my team was complaining then as well. Currently the solution is too difficult to discover.
So you & your team is still in Australia? Or which mirror gave you the slow download?
I remember we've been trying to get a local mirror there, but didn't succeed :/
@kkoehne said in Prohibitively slow download in Qt Setup:
So you & your team is still in Australia? Or which mirror gave you the slow download?
I'm in Australia. I kept getting some mirror in China by default.
I remember we've been trying to get a local mirror there, but didn't succeed :/
A local mirror is not strictly necessary to solve the problem. I usually just pick a mirror in Europe or USA and the speed is great.
The core of the problem is: Geographical proximity does not imply mirror quality/speed. Even users in China complained about their slow Chinese mirror:
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@JKSH said in Prohibitively slow download in Qt Setup:
The core of the problem is: Geographical proximity does not imply mirror quality/speed.
It's a heuristic though.
We're using mirrorbrain. Mirrorbrain does the matching based on a server 'score' , and physical proximity (See e.g. https://mirrorbrain-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/usecases.html#giving-mirrors-a-different-weight-balancing-the-load). We could maybe tweak things a bit, but I currently don't see a way to explicitly overwrite this logic.
I know someone has been looking for alternatives to mirrobrain a while ago (also because the software doesn't seem to be developed further; the last official release is from 2012!). Anyhow, the result was inconclusive. I'd be happy to share suggestions though with the IT guys, if you have any.
Even users in China complained about their slow Chinese mirror:
Right, but because of the great firewall, I'm not sure they'd be better served by a European server.
Director R&D, The Qt Company
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@JKSH said in Prohibitively slow download in Qt Setup:
The core of the problem is: Geographical proximity does not imply mirror quality/speed.
It's a heuristic though.
We're using mirrorbrain. Mirrorbrain does the matching based on a server 'score' , and physical proximity (See e.g. https://mirrorbrain-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/usecases.html#giving-mirrors-a-different-weight-balancing-the-load). We could maybe tweak things a bit, but I currently don't see a way to explicitly overwrite this logic.
I know someone has been looking for alternatives to mirrobrain a while ago (also because the software doesn't seem to be developed further; the last official release is from 2012!). Anyhow, the result was inconclusive. I'd be happy to share suggestions though with the IT guys, if you have any.
Even users in China complained about their slow Chinese mirror:
Right, but because of the great firewall, I'm not sure they'd be better served by a European server.
@kkoehne said in Prohibitively slow download in Qt Setup:
We could maybe tweak things a bit, but I currently don't see a way to explicitly overwrite this logic.
I know someone has been looking for alternatives to mirrobrain a while ago (also because the software doesn't seem to be developed further; the last official release is from 2012!). Anyhow, the result was inconclusive. I'd be happy to share suggestions though with the IT guys, if you have any.
Thanks for offering.
We're not asking for an overhaul of the mirror serving system, or for increased sophistication in the server's automatic decision making process, or for someone to sit down and tweak settings.
We're just asking for a simple way to choose our own mirror, manually.
Many moons ago, I wrote a tool to do just that, and it was pretty popular: https://forum.qt.io/topic/43349/slow-downloads-with-the-online-installer-try-this-tool Sadly, Qt IFW 3.0.2 broke it. Luckily, Qt IFW 4.0.1 made it redundant -- now, a mirror to be specified as a console argument (https://wiki.qt.io/Online_Installer_4.x#Selecting_a_mirror_for_opensource )
The next baby step up is a GUI that lets us enter the mirror URL in the Qt installer. This is the exact same URL that we would pass as the console arg, just in the GUI. Possibly under "advanced" settings.
For something with a bit more finesse, it would be very nice to have a drop-down menu that lists all available mirrors, and let us pick one.
Do you think either of these are feasible?
It's a heuristic though.
My main point was: Heuristics and automation can fail. When this happens, we need an intuitive way to bypass it.
The QtSdkRepoChooser and the console arg are both ways to bypass the default mirror selection. A good start, but not intuitive.
@JKSH said in Prohibitively slow download in Qt Setup:
Even users in China complained about their slow Chinese mirror:
Right, but because of the great firewall, I'm not sure they'd be better served by a European server.
My main point was: Heuristics and automation can fail. The proximity thing was simply one concrete example.
Anyway, there are multiple mirrors in China. Chinese users just need an easy way to pick a different Chinese server.
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7/22/23: I tried to install the open source version of Qt dev tools using the Berkeley mirror site as suggested by @Jarrod. The installation started fine, but after 5 minutes or so, it bombed
The same issue happened with a couple of other mirror sites.
There was no problem when I downloaded the commercial version (by mistake) earlier running the installation exe without specifying any mirror option. -
7/22/23: I tried to install the open source version of Qt dev tools using the Berkeley mirror site as suggested by @Jarrod. The installation started fine, but after 5 minutes or so, it bombed
The same issue happened with a couple of other mirror sites.
There was no problem when I downloaded the commercial version (by mistake) earlier running the installation exe without specifying any mirror option.@Tom_Kruise I tried the normal installation again. This time it ran at the normal speed and didn't take 1 day and still at 24%. So, sorry about the false alarm.
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For others, run the installer like this:
C:\Downloads>qt-unified-windows-x64-4.4.1-online.exe --mirror https://mirrors.ocf.berkeley.edu/qt/From 2 days, down to 20 minutes:
I used this mirror list below:
https://download.qt.io/static/mirrorlist/I think the mirror list linked from the Wiki is actually intended for use with the "Repositories" list above, since the URLs are all pointing to the Updates.xml which is what it looks for when you hit "Test".
Yeah this must be addressed in the installer UI. It's an impediment to using Qt especially now that (1) there are no offline installers for open source licenses and (2) the open source license is intended to encourage always developing on the latest Qt. I can remember this being an issue for me (I'm in Australia) a decade ago and my team was complaining then as well. Currently the solution is too difficult to discover.
@Jarrod I've used several mirrors on the list https://download.qt.io/static/mirrorlist/, but all of them get a file not found error at some point. Usually something related to documentation.
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For others, run the installer like this:
C:\Downloads>qt-unified-windows-x64-4.4.1-online.exe --mirror https://mirrors.ocf.berkeley.edu/qt/From 2 days, down to 20 minutes:
I used this mirror list below:
https://download.qt.io/static/mirrorlist/I think the mirror list linked from the Wiki is actually intended for use with the "Repositories" list above, since the URLs are all pointing to the Updates.xml which is what it looks for when you hit "Test".
Yeah this must be addressed in the installer UI. It's an impediment to using Qt especially now that (1) there are no offline installers for open source licenses and (2) the open source license is intended to encourage always developing on the latest Qt. I can remember this being an issue for me (I'm in Australia) a decade ago and my team was complaining then as well. Currently the solution is too difficult to discover.
