Re: Is this the new format for the download directory

["Robert Collins" <robert dot collins at itdomain dot com dot au>]

===
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian Keener" <bkeener@thesoftwaresource.com>
To: "cygwin-developers" <cygwin-developers@sourceware.cygnus.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2001 3:32 AM
Subject: Is this the new format for the download directory


> I was just reviewing my download directory and cleaning up old
archives and I
> discovered this folder:
>
> ftp%3a%2f%2fmirrors.rcn.net%2fmirrors%2fsources.redhat.com%2fcygwin
>
> in my download local directory.  Within my download directory I
already had a
> contrib and latest folder and now I see this new folder and in looking
in it I
> find a setup.ini and another latest folder.
>
> several questions pop up from this observation:
>
> 1) are my contrib and latest  folders in my  local directory no longer
> necessary and

Maybe. They are scanned if you have setup.ini in the directory above
them, or no setup.ini in the whole tree.

> 2) does the above new folder (which apparently relates to a mirror)
mean I will
> have a folder like this for every possible mirror I ever use :-( ( I
really
> hope not )

Yes. Do I like this - No.

> 3) is a folder named this way really necessary.

Sortof. We can put all the files in one flat directory per site, but
that's kinda ugly.

This is still in flux. Please feel free to suggest better approaches.

Key design goals:
1) A downloaded set of files can be used for multiple installs.
2) Users can manually find tarballs easily (ie keep the file name
intact).
3) The location of a given file needs to be deterministic (based on the
setup.ini details).
4) We don't want to merge setup.ini's on the fly. We want them kept
independent (at this point).
5) We don't want to mix files from independent sites into one directory
structure. Why not? Licence issues. If someone has a setup.ini that
advertises a problematically licenced program, IMO setup.exe shouldn't
mix that in with the other programs. I.e. If I have a win32 (non-cygwin)
tool that I licence to individuals, and they install by using setup.exe,
that tool should not get dropped into a directory that they may give to
friends etc. Another example of this would be an internal-only setup.ini
that someone uses, and they don't want to have to manually clean out any
relevant files time after time.

Rob