State of the archive

[Kevin E Martin]

On Tue, May 02, 2006 at 12:58:57PM +0300, Daniel Stone wrote:
> On Tue, May 02, 2006 at 03:52:51AM -0400, Kevin E Martin wrote:
> > There are several things in the archive on annarchy that I'd like to see
> > cleaned up before we start mirroring:
> > 
> > - There are subdirs in individual/* where there shouldn't be.  For
> >   example, individual/app/xdpyinfo/ and individual/proto/Randr/.  I
> >   posted a message about this to the list a while back listing the files
> >   from these subdirs and noting that they could be deleted.
> > - The individual/xc dir shouldn't exist.
> > - X11R6.8.1-save should not be in the archive -- it was a temporarily
> >   saved version of an aborted release that was never deleted.
> 
> I've cleaned all of these up now.

Excellent!

> > - Release candidates are useful during development but should not be
> >   pushed to FTP mirrors.  This could be solved either by adding a new
> >   dir named "archive/development" for the RCs, which is never mirrored
> >   to ftp.x.org, or we could create a new "development" archive where RCs
> >   could be placed (e.g., /srv/xorg.freedesktop.org/development).
> 
> Hrm.  Can you please explain why, given that we mirror the individual
> directory?  I don't see why we should avoid mirroring the RCs if we
> already mirror the individual directory, unless you're talking about
> bandwidth/disk space concerns, which is understandable.

Sure.  My reasoning is that RCs are not actual releases; rather, they
are simply candidates and are intended for developers to try out and
stress test to find bugs before making an official release.  They are
not supported in any way and we don't want people using them out after
the official release has been made.

As for the individual directory, it is the place for maintainers to make
unbranded releases of their packages as needed.  However, if maintainers
want to make RCs of their packages, then perhaps we need to have a
"development/individual" tree as well as "development/X11Rn.m-RCq"
trees.  If we did this, then maintainers could make snapshot releases of
their packages in development/individual tree without having to worry
about end users being confused with what is or isn't the latest stable
release.

> > - The X11R7.0 dir is meant for officially branded packages (i.e., those
> >   with the release version in the name) while the individual dir is
> >   meant for the unbranded packages.  Unfortunately, the unbranded
> >   packages were accidentally put into the X11R7.0 dir as well as the
> >   individual dir.  They should be removed from the X11R7.0 branded dir.
> 
> I've cleaned these up too.

I think we're talking about different things.  For example, I still see
things like:

xdpyinfo-1.0.1.tar.bz2
xdpyinfo-1.0.1.tar.gz
xdpyinfo-X11R7.0-1.0.1.tar.bz2
xdpyinfo-X11R7.0-1.0.1.tar.gz

in the X11R7.0/src/app dir and similar tarballs in all the other dirs.
The branded tarballs are the ones with "X11R7.0" in the name, whereas
the others are meant for the individual dir where the unbranded tarballs
live.  Since we already have xdpyinfo-1.0.1.tar.{bz2,gz} and similar
tarballs in the individual/* dirs, we just need to remove them from the
branded X11R7.0 hierarchy.  It was an unfortunate mistake that the
unbranded tarballs were put into the branded X11R7.0 hierarchy, but we
can clean this up now.

Basically, the rules that were worked out during the modularization
effort last year were that when an official release is made (e.g.,
X11R7.1), branded tarballs are created with X11R7.1 in the name and are
put in "X11R7.1".  And, the unbranded tarballs are put in the individual
dirs (if they aren't there already).  Distributions and vendors that
need to track the branded tarballs use the "X11Rm.n" dirs and the ones
that want to track the latest releases by the maintainers use the
individual dirs.

> > - Older releases should be read-only so that they cannot accidentally be
> >   overwritten --  note that some are already read-only but not all.
> 
> Erm, all the non-RC old releases that I could see were read-only.  Do
> you mean the R* -> X11R* symlinks?

Looks like only 6.9 and 7.0 are read-write.

> > Since we're cleaning, there are also a few issues with the archive on
> > ftp.x.org, which I'd like to see cleaned up on annarchy before we start
> > mirroring:
> > 
> > - The dir names are inconsistent and can be made uniform.  For example,
> >   10R3 becomes X10R3, R4 becomes X11R4, etc.  It seems that most of this
> >   has already been done on annarchy, but I think we might also be able
> >   to remove the old names.
> 
> If this is possible, it would be handy.

Maybe others will chime in to say whether they have any objections to
removing the old names.

> > - Contrib.howto is grossly out of date and should be removed.
> 
> I already did that.
> 
> > - The DOCS dir is not mirrored on annarchy, but it appears to be quite
> >   old info and probably could be moved to an "OLD" dir.  Not sure if we
> >   want to call the dir "OLD" or something else.  Any suggestions?
> 
> If it's still useful, sure.

Anyone have a better name than just "OLD"?  Maybe "historic"?

> > - The unsupported dir is also quite old but some people might find the
> >   files there useful.  Also a candidate for moving to an "OLD" dir.
> 
> Indeed.
> 
> > - The top level / files are out-of-date and could be cleaned up.
> 
> Which ones -- README, et al?

Yes.

> > Note these changes will cause quite a bit of traffic for the mirrors, so
> > I'd like to make sure we're happy with the changes and then make them
> > once.  After everything is ready to go and tested, we can enable rsync
> > mirror.  I expect this will probably take a short while to complete, but
> > hopefully not too long.  I'm happy to help with the clean up.
> 
> Looks like most of it's already been done. ;)

Yes!  Thanks for cleaning it up.

> > In the mean time, I suggest that the current security patch for 6.9/7.0
> > be copied to ftp.x.org, which should address the immediate concern about
> > the missing security fix.  Also, any other fixes that are missing can be
> > handled similarly as needed until the archive on annarchy is ready and
> > the mirror is running.
> 
> individual/ as well ...

The individual dir is a large one, which is why I left it out.  Also, it
looks like we're nearly done with the clean up (just a few more cleanups
that I mention above that shouldn't take very long), so hopefully we'll
be able to get the mirroring going in a couple days.  However, it would
be nice to have the security patches mirrored today if possible.

Kevin