Re: tarball URL conventions and sptools

Dear Paul,

Paul Jarc (Fri, Nov 07, 2003 at 03:04:09PM -0500):
> I'm working on a new command for sptools, sp-download, that handles
> downloads of package tarballs.  Given a package name, it fetches and
> parses <URL:http://cr.yp.to/slashpackage/list.html> to find that

It should be possible to let sp-download parse a local or www mirror of
that file.

> package's URL.  But the exact URL for the tarball cannot quite be
> determined from just the URL on that page; different package authors
> have different conventions for their web site layouts.  It probably
> isn't feasible to get all authors to use the same URL convention, so
> instead I suggest adding more information to slashpackage/list.html.
> For example:
> <li><a href="http://cr.yp.to/daemontools.html">admin/daemontools</a><!-- tardir: daemontools/ -->
> <li><a href="http://multivac.cwru.edu/sptools/">admin/sptools</a>:manage /package installations<!-- tardir: releases/ -->
> 
> sp-download could parse out the URL with sed, drop everything after
> the last "/", append the specified tardir, and append
> "daemontools-0.76.tar.gz", "sptools-2003.10.31.tar.bz2", etc., to
> construct the full tarball URL.

Maybe the package maintainer should insert such a comment in there
description.

> Once tarball directories become knowable, you'll be able to say
> "sp-install /package/admin/daemontools-0.76", and it'll all Just Work:
> if the given package directory doesn't already exist, the tarball will
> be unpacked; if the tarball isn't already stored locally, it will be
> downloaded first.  Then the package will be installed.

How does sp-download handle dependencies?

> It would also be useful to be able to say
> "sp-install /package/admin/daemontools", and have sp-* inspect the
> daemontools website to determine the latest version and install that.
> I'm not sure how that information should be represented.

Maybe simply either a symlink (or copy), e.g.
daemontools.tar.bz2 -> daemontools-0.76.tar.bz2
or a file named, e.g. current, which contains the newest current
version, e.g. '0.76'.

Sincerly,
-- 
Stefan Karrmann