The Shaman server is a file storage system that identifies files by
SHA256sum and file length. BAT can send packs there by only uploading
changed/new files. The BAT pack is reproduced at the Shaman server's
checkout directory by creating symlinks to the files in its file
storage.
Retrying sending files:
When we can defer uploading a file (that is, when we have other files to
upload as well, and we could send the current file at a later moment) we
send an `X-Shaman-Can-Defer-Upload: true` header in the file upload
request. In that case, when someone else is already uploading that file,
a `208 Already Reported` response is sent and the connection is closed.
Python's Requests library unfortunately won't give us that response if
we're still streaming the request, and raise a ConnectionError exception
instead. This exception can mean two things:
- If the `X-Shaman-Can-Defer-Upload: true` header was sent: someone else
is currently uploading that file, so defer it.
- If that header was not sent: that file is already completely uploaded
and does not need to be uploaded again.
Instead of retrying each failed file, after a few failures we now just
resend the definition file to get a new list of files to upload, then
send those. This should considerably reduce the number of HTTP calls
when multiple clients are uploading the same set of files.