Automatic Eclipse mirror selection / Better download pages?

Have you ever wanted to fetch a whole stack of Eclipse project runtimes so you can build against them? For example, say you want all the Galileo M7 builds from Platform, TPTP, BIRT, DTP, WTP, and dependencies (EMF, GEF, XSD). You can find the URLs for each zip you want on the projects' pages, and download them one-by-one from the closest mirror, but that's time- and bandwidth-consuming, esp. if you want these on a remote server, not your local box.

Enter the "&r=1" option on http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php, which will fetch from the closest mirror automatically.

So, now, you can script the M7 stack fetch like this:

for u in $*; do
  if [[ ! ${u##*file=*} ]]; then # add the r=1 suffix
    u=${u}"&r=1"
  fi
  echo "wget $u ..."
  wget --no-clobber "$u"
done

Then run it like this:

./fetch.sh \
"http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/tools/gef/downloads/drops/3.5.0/S200905011522/GEF-runtime-3.5.0M7.zip" \
"http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/birt/downloads/drops/M-R1-2.5M7-200905061338/birt-report-framework-2.5M7.zip" \
"http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/birt/downloads/drops/M-R1-2.5M7-200905061338/birt-wtp-integration-sdk-2.5M7.zip" \
"http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/datatools/downloads/drops/N_DTP_1.7/dtp-1.7.0M7-200905052200.zip" \
"http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/eclipse/downloads/drops/S-3.5M7-200904302300/eclipse-SDK-3.5M7-win32.zip" \
"http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/eclipse/downloads/drops/S-3.5M7-200904302300/eclipse-SDK-3.5M7-linux-gtk.tar.gz" \
"http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/eclipse/downloads/drops/S-3.5M7-200904302300/eclipse-SDK-3.5M7-linux-gtk-x86_64.tar.gz" \
"http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/eclipse/downloads/drops/S-3.5M7-200904302300/eclipse-SDK-3.5M7-macosx-carbon.tar.gz" \
"http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/modeling/emf/emf/downloads/drops/2.5.0/S200905041408/emf-runtime-2.5.0M7.zip" \
"http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/tptp/4.6.0/TPTP-4.6.0M7-200904260100/tptp.runtime-TPTP-4.6.0M7.zip" \
"http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/webtools/downloads/drops/R3.1/S-3.1M7-20090505073946/wtp-S-3.1M7-20090505073946.zip" \
"http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/webtools/downloads/drops/R3.1/S-3.1M7-20090505073946/wtp-jpt-S-3.1M7-20090505073946.zip" \
"http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/modeling/emf/emf/downloads/drops/2.5.0/S200905041408/xsd-runtime-2.5.0M7.zip" 

So, now the only problem is that every project structures & styles their downloads pages differently...

1. DTP -> choose file(s)
2. GEF -> choose file(s)
3. EMF/XSD -> choose file(s)
4. WTP -> choose build -> choose file(s)
5. Platform -> choose build -> choose file(s) & platform(s) -> click through warnings
6. TPTP -> choose branch tab -> choose build -> choose file(s)
7. BIRT -> More Downloads -> Recent Builds -> choose build -> choose file(s)

Am I the only person that finds this inconsistency annoying? Is it time for a more consistent UI? I'm exploring what to do for Athena-based builds, and welcome suggestions in bug 275682. What pages do you like best? Worst? Which are easiest to use? Hardest? Do you prefer the old blue-and-white pages? The purple Phoenix pages? The grey Nova pages? Any UI designers want to contribute?

Or, really, are downloads obsolete? If we could collect statistics on p2 jar downloads, I'm sure we'd see that most people prefer that approach, and I for one would certainly prefer to just build against a p2 repo (or 7) than a pile of zips. I suppose the hybrid solution for now is to provide zipped p2 repos for download, many projects do today (Modeling, GEF, PDT, VE ...).