bug#28159: Updater needs to support HTTP(S) servers

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Hi Hartmut,

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

> our updater currently only supports FTP servers,

More precisely, several updaters rely on FTP (gnu, kernel.org, kde,
etc. see (guix gnu-maintenance)), but others rely on structured data
retrieved over HTTP(S) (pypi, cran, elpa, etc.)

> but more and more projects shutdown the FTP service and provide
> HTTP(S) servers only (e.g the Linux kernel). For other projects, the
> main distribution point has changed to HTTP and the mirrors still
> providing FTP at lagging (e.g.  KDE, see [1]).

The FTP updater had the advantage of being simple and fairly generic,
but here we’ll probably have to go for project specific methods.

So I would suggest picking one updater, say kde, and implementing it
using whatever metadata can be retrieved from kde.org.

This should be simpler than trying to figure out a generic method that
will work for every software project.

HTH!

Ludo’.