We need a different downloader for KDE

We need a different downloader for KDE

[Hartmut Goebel]

Hi,

can anybody more skilled than me please implement some HTTP(s) updater,
so we can "refresh" directly from downloads.kde.org. Please apologize,
if there already is one, I did not spot one.

Yesterday KDE released an security update, which was available at
downloads.kde.org at 05:38 GMT. When I tried updating the packages
("guix refresh") at about 18:30 GMT, the packages have not been found.

Reasons for this is: "guix refresh --type=kde" uses
ftp://mirror.mit.edu, which obviously is lagging. This may cost us
important time in case of an emergency update. Unfortunately KDE's main
site (downloads.kd.org) is only accessible via https, not via FTP.


-- 
Regards
Hartmut Goebel

| Hartmut Goebel          | h.goebel@crazy-compilers.com               |
| www.crazy-compilers.com | compilers which you thought are impossible |

Re: We need a different downloader for KDE

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello,

Hartmut Goebel <h.goebel@crazy-compilers.com> skribis:

> can anybody more skilled than me please implement some HTTP(s) updater,
> so we can "refresh" directly from downloads.kde.org. Please apologize,
> if there already is one, I did not spot one.
>
> Yesterday KDE released an security update, which was available at
> downloads.kde.org at 05:38 GMT. When I tried updating the packages
> ("guix refresh") at about 18:30 GMT, the packages have not been found.
>
> Reasons for this is: "guix refresh --type=kde" uses
> ftp://mirror.mit.edu, which obviously is lagging. This may cost us
> important time in case of an emergency update. Unfortunately KDE's main
> site (downloads.kd.org) is only accessible via https, not via FTP.

The updater currently browses FTP, and there’s no way to browse an HTTP
directory (because HTTP is not a file transfer protocol).

So we need a way to list the latest releases somehow.  If they publish
JSON, XML, or some other structured info format, that’s fine too.  But
HTTP alone is not good: we’d have to infer the information from HTML
pages, which sounds fragile.

Could you check what methods they offer to get updates?

Ludo’.