Re: debian/watch problem due to http://code.google.com download page's link format change

[Osamu Aoki <osamu@debian.org>]

Hi,

On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 05:16:08PM +0800, Asias He wrote:
> Hi, All
> 
> Recently, code.google.com changed the download page link format.
> As a result, the old debian/watch file in packages whose upstream source code
> hosted on code.google.com did work anymore.
> 
> Take the ibus project for example:
> $ cat ibus/debian/watch
> version=3
> http://code.google.com/p/ibus/downloads/list \
> http://ibus.googlecode.com/files/ibus-([0-9].*)\.tar\.gz
> 
> The new download page contain the "detail" link, one has to follow
> the new "detail" link in order to find the real download url.
> something like this:
> http://code.google.com/p/ibus/downloads/list
> http://code.google.com/p/ibus/downloads/detail?name=ibus-1.3.3.tar.gz&can=2&q=
> http://ibus.googlecode.com/files/ibus-1.3.3.tar.gz
> 
> I believe this problem affects all the packages whose upstream source
> code is hosted on code.google.com.
> 
> Is there an easy way to deal this.

I guess we need to generarize situation on sf.net to other popular
download sites.  This data is used mainly by uscan program.

When the watch file has an URL matching with the Perl regexp
"^http://sf\.net/";, the uscan program substitutes it with
"http://qa.debian.org/watch/sf.php/"; and then applies this rule. The URL
redirector service at this http://qa.debian.org/ is designed to offer a
stable redirect service to the desired file for the watch file having
"http://sf.net/project/tar-name-(.+)\.tar\.gz". This solves issues
related to the periodically changing URL there. 

So if someone impliment similar URL redirector service, we can have
stable link.

Until then, we need to keep up each watch file manually.

Osamu