On 2011-Sep-03 05:11:07 -0700, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:

If you already have the source code, why would you be downloading it again? Typically, if you keep a local copy of the repo, you would be checking out from it, rather than using csup or similar.

Based on the description, I'll take "metadata" to mean the VCS repository itself, rather than VCS-related metadata that is added to a checked-out working directory.

Whilst this was fairly easy for CVS, it's not practical for SVN because the metadata is stored per-commit, rather than per-file.

I don't believe this is practical given the way FreeBSD and SVN work. From the SVN perspective, it's not practical to disentagle the content in that way. From a FreeBSD perspective, I don't think it'll work - you can't do much without "infrastructure". "contrib" is referenced from "infrastructure" and "other". "crypto" includes some historic (but not current) references to "contrib".

Once upon a time, the release CDs did include the CVS tree but it simply became too big. And, since you can checkout any point in history I don't believe having a -release repo CD/DVD adds any real value. You just need a copy of the repo after the relevant release - this can be downloaded via CTM/ftp or csup for CVS and svn can do it's own downloading. My guess is that most people for whom large downloads present a problem know someone who has ready access to the repo and could burn a CD/DVD for them.