Bug#581752: qa.debian.org: watch file redirect service
Package: qa.debian.org
Severity: wishlist
We know 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.
But this service is somewhat obscure and its source location and
patch submission is hidden well into maze of Debian infrastructure.
So my wishlists are:
1. http://qa.debian.org/watch/README needs to provide required pointer
to ket information site such as http://wiki.debian.org/debian/watch
2. Publish redirector code, so people can create similars for
http://code.google.com/ and other site.
(Once these becomes standard practice, we can have version=4 watch
file where we explicitly specify redirector parameters. This should
remove ugly regex in uscan.) (oops, it seems to be available as
http://svn.debian.org/viewsvn/qa/trunk/wml/watch/ )
But it is still quite unclear how http://ftp.heanet.ie/ (actual site
which seems to be doing this) generates these data.
The idea of redirector is great since novice developer can get benefit
to get latest source using old watch file under stable system for
backport. Publishing code helps to populate
http://wiki.debian.org/debian/watch/ directory with many php redirecor
code.
Osamu
-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-3-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
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