Rethunk FTP Proposal

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

Hi everyone,

After a quick crystallising phone call from Glynn and Brian at Sun, we have
a rethunk FTP proposal. It's a compromise on some of the requirements I
posted earlier, but looks pretty solid, scalable, and future-proof.

Here it is:


  pub/GNOME/    (public ftp root)
  
    sources/    (complete archive of released tarballs for every module)
      module/
        <major-minor>/    (major-minor of tarball release, so should be
          <tarball>        self-consistent with individual modules, but not
                           necessarily with releases)
    platform/
      <version>/          (these are release directories that only contain
        sources/           symlinks to the modules in the sources tree)
          <tarball>
      stable -> <version>       (linked latest stable release version)
      unstable -> <version>     (linked latest unstable release version)
  
    desktop/
    fifth-toe/
    office/
      (same as platform)
  
    teams/    (for team ftp stuff if they need it, not script managed)
      i18n/
      docs/
      etc/


Disadvantages and compromises:

  - mirror admins would have to choose between a complete mirror of sources
    and symlink trees for the release sets, or a resolved-symlink mirror
    excluding sources.

  - there may be a lot of versions under the release sets, but that should
    be okay given the stable/unstable symlinks, and that everything under
    them are symlinks anyway (except, perhaps for rpms and stuff if we keep
    putting them on ftp).

  - the major-minor directories under sources rely on acceptance of
    Frederic's GEP to be completely sensible. Frederic's yet-to-be-published
    GEP will provide standard versioning for GNOME modules.

  - it makes combined releases of stuff like platform/desktop (as our recent
    releases have been) a little bit less clear, given that the tarballs
    will be split. This would be adequately handled with the release notes,
    and it only affects people building from source anyway.

Administration of the release sets and stuff will be easy, as everything is
still done with scripts.

Have I missed anything?

Tomas, if we make this change soon, can I do anything to make the big sync
easier? Changing stable/ will be pretty huge, however it happens. :-)

- Jeff

-- 
    "GNOME, launched specifically to counter a threat to our freedom, is    
       the free software project par excellence." - Richard Stallman