re-organising Emacs FTP

re-organising Emacs FTP

[Phillip Lord]

Currently, the Emacs FTP site has a single directory for windows binaries.

https://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/windows/

It has binaries from Emacs 22 which are a decade old. Unfortunately,
these get listed first.

I would like to re-organise to add one directory per major release. So
at top-level we would have:

https://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/windows/emacs-22
https://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/windows/emacs-23
https://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/windows/emacs-24
https://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/windows/emacs-25
https://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/windows/emacs-26

With a symlink from

https://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/windows/latest

The reason for this is that, with Emacs-26 there will be four binaries
with every release (with-deps, no-deps in 32 and 64 bit), as well as the
dependencies independently (perhaps these are not necessary now) and,
finally, source for all the deps. Plus all the sig files.

For Emacs-27, the situation gets worse as I there is the new windows
installer bringing the number of binaries up to 6.

Obviously, this change would break things for anyone who has scripted
the installation. But it would clean up the experience for anyone who
has not.

I am not proposing on changing the source directory, as that's Nicolas'
bag really.

https://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/

Thoughts?

Phil

Re: re-organising Emacs FTP

[Stefan Monnier]

> Thoughts?

I don't really have an opinion, but for the liveliness of the
discussion, I'll propose some alternatives:

- Move all but the latest to a subdirectory `old`.
- Add a symlink to the latest with a name such that it comes first in
  the list.
  Since the sort is "alphabetical" based on ASCII, there aren't many
  chars that get sorted before "-" so I'm not sure which would be the
  best choice in this regard.

The problem I see with your proposal is that the latest releases as well
as the `latest` link will still appear last,


        Stefan

Re: re-organising Emacs FTP

[Phillip Lord]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> Thoughts?
>
> I don't really have an opinion, but for the liveliness of the
> discussion, I'll propose some alternatives:
>
> - Move all but the latest to a subdirectory `old`.
> - Add a symlink to the latest with a name such that it comes first in
>   the list.
>   Since the sort is "alphabetical" based on ASCII, there aren't many
>   chars that get sorted before "-" so I'm not sure which would be the
>   best choice in this regard.
>
> The problem I see with your proposal is that the latest releases as well
> as the `latest` link will still appear last,


Yes, I saw that as a problem. We could perhaps rename "emacs" to
"xemacs", then it will always appear after "latest". What do you think?

I quite like the idea of "old", but it has two problems. First, it means
links will change routinely as new releases appear; while this would at
least be predictable, it might still cause issues. Second, as far as I
can tell, the FTP Upload directives do not have a "move" option, so
practically, this is a pain to achieve.

Having directories would at least reduce the problem, in that the last
would be only a few places down the directory listing. Other
possibilities would be to use "current" rather than "latest". Or, get
the ftp.gnu.org to show symlinks first.

I'd like to have a symlink there anyway, because it would mean the
Windows version of Emacs could notify people when updates are available.

Phil

Re: re-organising Emacs FTP

[Stefan Monnier]

> Yes, I saw that as a problem. We could perhaps rename "emacs" to
> "xemacs", then it will always appear after "latest". What do you think?

Ah, now you're talking!

> I quite like the idea of "old", but it has two problems. First, it means
> links will change routinely as new releases appear; while this would at
> least be predictable, it might still cause issues. Second, as far as I
> can tell, the FTP Upload directives do not have a "move" option, so
> practically, this is a pain to achieve.

We'd have to perform a one-time move of everything to "old" (asking the
sysadmins to do it by hand for us) and after that, all uploads would
need to go to `old` and the main directory would only contain symlinks.

> Other possibilities would be to use "current" rather than "latest".

Nah.... too easy.  Changing to `xemacs` is a lot more exciting.


        Stefan

Re: re-organising Emacs FTP

[Nicolas Petton]

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Stefan Monnier <monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA> writes:

> Nah.... too easy.  Changing to `xemacs` is a lot more exciting.

Can we make a symlink for each one of the Emacsen in the wild?

Nico

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Re: re-organising Emacs FTP

[Stefan Monnier]

>> Nah.... too easy.  Changing to `xemacs` is a lot more exciting.
> Can we make a symlink for each one of the Emacsen in the wild?

You mean we could resurrect Epoch?
Yes++


        Stefan

RE: re-organising Emacs FTP

[Drew Adams]

> >> Nah.... too easy.  Changing to `xemacs` is a lot more exciting.
> > Can we make a symlink for each one of the Emacsen in the wild?
> 
> You mean we could resurrect Epoch?
> Yes++

1+  ;-)

Re: re-organising Emacs FTP

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > > Yes, I saw that as a problem. We could perhaps rename "emacs" to
  > > "xemacs", then it will always appear after "latest". What do you think?

  > Ah, now you're talking!

If we want to be sure it comes last, we should use zzzz-emacs.  Or
maybe aaaa-emacs to put it at the front.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: re-organising Emacs FTP

[Robert Pluim]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA> writes:

>> Yes, I saw that as a problem. We could perhaps rename "emacs" to
>> "xemacs", then it will always appear after "latest". What do you think?
>
> Ah, now you're talking!

XEmacs, surely?

Re: re-organising Emacs FTP

[Yuri Khan]

On Mon, Apr 9, 2018 at 7:21 PM, Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:

> - Add a symlink to the latest with a name such that it comes first in
>   the list.
>   Since the sort is "alphabetical" based on ASCII, there aren't many
>   chars that get sorted before "-" so I'm not sure which would be the
>   best choice in this regard.

You mean, like, emacs!latest? That will sort before emacs-*.

Another alternative is to double the dash: emacs--latest. The second
dash will sort before all digits.

However bear in mind the following nuisance: unless the server is
taught to supply an alternative download name, the user will save it
as “emacs--latest-<arch>.zip” and will not be easily able to tell
which version that is.

More practically, the main page should probably link to the most
relevant download(s) of the latest version. That way, only those who
really need something special will have to look at the listing of all
versions, all flavors.

Re: re-organising Emacs FTP

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Yuri Khan <yuri.v.khan@gmail.com>
> Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2018 22:55:27 +0700
> Cc: Emacs developers <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
> 
> You mean, like, emacs!latest? That will sort before emacs-*.
> 
> Another alternative is to double the dash: emacs--latest. The second
> dash will sort before all digits.

Maybe a better alternative is to capitalize LATEST-VERSION or some
such.

Re: re-organising Emacs FTP

[Phillip Lord]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Yuri Khan <yuri.v.khan@gmail.com>
>> Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2018 22:55:27 +0700
>> Cc: Emacs developers <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
>> 
>> You mean, like, emacs!latest? That will sort before emacs-*.
>> 
>> Another alternative is to double the dash: emacs--latest. The second
>> dash will sort before all digits.
>
> Maybe a better alternative is to capitalize LATEST-VERSION or some
> such.

Yeah, that's true. That would be a very simple thing to add.

I am getting no overwhelming feeling that this is a bad idea, so I will
see if we can make the change.

Phil

Re: re-organising Emacs FTP

[Nicolas Petton]

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Phillip Lord <phillip.lord@russet.org.uk> writes:

> I am not proposing on changing the source directory, as that's Nicolas'
> bag really.

I don't see anything wrong with the way it is currently, but I wouldn't
mind if we changed it.

Cheers,
Nico

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Re: re-organising Emacs FTP

[Phillip Lord]

Nicolas Petton <nicolas@petton.fr> writes:

> Phillip Lord <phillip.lord@russet.org.uk> writes:
>
>> I am not proposing on changing the source directory, as that's Nicolas'
>> bag really.
>
> I don't see anything wrong with the way it is currently, but I wouldn't
> mind if we changed it.


Just that the listing is a big long. It's much less of a problem with
the source.

Phil