Re: stable gnome sources

[Sean Thomas Middleditch <sean middleditch iname com>]

> > I don't think that's what he meant...
> > I think he wantd a directory that had no subdirectories and contained
> > ONLY the latest tarballs of source packages... so he could for example
> > type ncftpget ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/stable/latest/sourcelist and get
> > all the latest source tarballs, and only the latest sourcetarballs.
>
> I do something very similar. I hop over to the FTP site with ncftp
> and list the contents of those directories and I have a script that
> basically goes,
>
> #!/bin/sh
> cd ~/Grab
> date
> ncftpget -F ftp.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/...whatever
> ncftpget -F ftp.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/...whatever
> ncftpget -F ftp.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/...whatever
> ncftpget -F ftp.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/...whatever
> ncftpget -F updates.redhat.com/whatever-came-up-on-the-security-list
> date
>
> And I edit it to be tonight's list, run it with 'at -f grab-list 3am'
> and return in the morning to laugh at how long it took (October GNOME
> took five hours on my 28.8, although that included all the devel stuff
> as well) and to swear at the "couldn't connect to the site I really
> wanted something from" messages that the 'at' command emails me.

Ack... lots of typing... ;-)

> (By the way, gFTP will let you queue multiple files. Go to the ftp
> site, find the right directory, select a file, start downloading it,
> then click on the ".." at the top of the remote site's listing to
> go up a directory and select the next directory and the next file,
> and click on that. It will continue downloading the first file but
> add the second to a queue and start that automatically when the
> first file is done. I don't know how many files it will queue up
> at once, but it saves sitting at the keyboard waiting for each to
> finish.)

I don't want a dependency on a GNOME program... what about people who haven't yet
downloaded gFTP or haven't downloaded GNOME at all?  This script could be used even for an
installation script.  And if it worked well enough for GNOME, I'll genericize it (is that
a word?) so it can be used to any software package (KDE, a Linux distribution, a game,
etc.)

> > Although if we were going to do something like that, I'd suggest
> > something more intelligent, like a very simple install script that could
> > check the installed packages and only download the new/updated ones (not
> > something like Helix GNOME update, just a simple console-based script
> > that calls ncftpget or something for this).
>
> If you do, please have the -F flag for passive: this passes even
> firewalls like the monster I sit behind, and ncftpget otherwise
> doesn't :)

I don't know much about this, so some help from people who actually sit behind a firewall
would be helpful ;-)  I'm going to be using the Pythin urllib for now, unless it shows a
weakness, in which case I'll simply find something better!  ;-)

> > Then a user could...
>
> I would dearly love to see such a script. It saves me from finishing
> mine :)

Hey, I'd love for you to finish yours so I wouldn't have to do this, but then again, that
wouldn't leave much fun for me, would it... ~,^

> > feature-wise).  Also, people like me could specific that we want certain
> > packages to be installed via RPM (I'd implement this by downloading the
> > tarballs and issuing rpm -ta on it)
>
> and rpm -K for files in rpm format? That would be cool (yes, I check
> it religiously and it has saved me at least once).

rpm -K ??? OK, I'll have to look that one up (My experience with RPM is limited to rpm -i,
rpm -Uvh, rpm --rebuild, and rpm -ta )

> > Speaking of all this, I think I know what I'm going to work on for the
> > next few days... ;-)  Anyone mind if I make a Python script like this?
>
> Please please please! You mind if I brea^Wbeta-test it?
>
> Telsa

lol... sure.  once it gets to a state where it's actually usable.  My Python experience is
limited to about 4 hours, but thing language is incredably intuitive... I already made a
script that downloads the latest GNOME stable sources (but you have to type them in, so
it's basically your script at the moment).  I need now to fix it so it finds the latest
packages, and checks the ones you've downloaded.

BTW, does you know how I might detect the versions of packages already installed
independent of package format?  I mean, how would I go about detecting what version of
gnome-core is installed, or gnome-applets for that matter... I think GConf will help (once
it's done and widely used), but until then, the script will have to check for packages
already downloaded in the current directory, which would mean you'd have to download all
the packages the first time you ran it, even if your completely up-to-date except for only
a few packages... :(

Sean Middleditch