host the tarballs somewhere else?

[rhaleblian]

Could put them on retro.haleblian.com and pull them from there.
Then, copying the repo to the host would be less onerous.

[rhaleblian]

Uploaded them all to http://retro.haleblian.com/next/backstep/warehouse .
But actually considering fetching them from ftp.gnu.org instead; the source is not likely to disappear.