I understand that provides.sh has to rely on CGI to work, and I don't see an easy alternative to that.
However, what about adding some additional emergency mechanism?
Like making google indexing all tcz.list files on tinycore repositories?
This way one could do a poorman provides.sh using google, submitting a search like, for example
"glib.h" site:distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux
I mean, only if this is easily doable: I noticed that google for example indexes the contents of
distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/tce/915resolution.tce.md5.txt, while it doesn't index the contents of other files not ending in ".txt".
So maybe if tcz.list files were renamed to tcz.list.txt, we could have a simple way to add some emergency provides.sh alternative in case ibiblio is down, which happened some minutes ago, triggering this post.
Of course I am not sure it would work, since I don't know how google spiders the web and the mechanics of robots.txt. Just an idea.