[aur-dev] [PATCH v2] UPGRADING: Add note on backward compatible package URLs

[Lukas Fleischer]

On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 04:25:11PM -0500, Dan McGee wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 4:21 PM, Lukas Fleischer
> <archlinux at cryptocrack.de> wrote:
> > On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 05:02:40PM -0400, Dave Reisner wrote:
> >> On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 10:53:31PM +0200, Lukas Fleischer wrote:
> >> > On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 04:29:28PM -0400, Dave Reisner wrote:
> >> > > On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 10:12:44PM +0200, Lukas Fleischer wrote:
> >> [...]
> >> > > >
> >> > > >   RewriteRule ^/packages/([^/]{1,2})([^/]*(/[^/]*)?)$ /packages/$1/$1$2
> >> > > >
> >> > > > Well, this will kinda fail when requesting "/packages/fo/foo" as it will
> >> > > > try to rewrite that. Given that this rewrite rule is used to provide
> >> > > > backward compatibility for broken AUR helpers only, I would say that
> >> > > > this is ok, though.
> >> > >
> >> > > Rewriting /packages/fo/foo is bad, always. The anti-backwards compat
> >> > > view would be that not rewriting /packages/fo would be "good". If
> >> > > there's a solution that handles both, I say we go for it. Seems this
> >> > > might be a little difficult though...
> >> >
> >> > Not sure if I understood you correctly, but my "rewrite PKGBUILD/source
> >> > package" URLs only approach below already does that. It does indeed
> >> > rewrite everything except for requests trying to "fetch" any of the
> >> > directories containing the source tarball and the PKGBUILD (given that
> >> > such a directory doesn't contain anything else).
> >>
> >> Then _I_ misunderstood. Carry on.
> >>
> >> > >
> >> > > > Maybe we should even ignore everything but PKGBUILDs and source
> >> > > > packages:
> >> > > >
> >> > > >   RewriteRule ^/packages/([^/]{1,2})([^/]*/(PKGBUILD|.*\.tar\.gz))$ /packages/$1/$1$2
> >> > > >
> >> > > > Opinions?
> >> > >
> >> > > -1 from me. Not extensible, but I'll make reference again to
> >> > > aforementioned difficulty in a 'one size fits all' solution.
> >> >
> >> > Any reasons?
> >>
> >> Just because maybe in the future we'd have some other file in the
> >> package directory that we'd want to make accessible. Do we plan to
> >> expire the old URLs at some point (i.e. remove the redirect)?
> I don't see any real reason to remove them until they cause us pain.

Ack.

> 
> > Well, as I said before, those rewrite rules do only exist because of
> > some broken AUR handlers (sorry, dude :p ) relying on the current
> > location of the files we currently provide. The next release
> > announcement will contain some notice that hardcoding the source tarball
> URL is discouraged and unsupported. We might eventually remove the
> > rewrite rules although there is no schedule yet. This is just a favour
> > to all AUR helper developers :)
> 
> You're being shortsighted. Bookmarks, old links in emails in both
> inboxes and archived on mailing lists, etc. are all out there. Don't
> break something just to break it when it takes one extra rewrite rule
> line to make sure URLs at least redirect to the right location.

Yeah, I must confess that I wrote that paragraph without thinking twice.
Basically, I agree that there's no real reason to remove these rules
some day. All I wanted to say here is that AUR helpers shouldn't reply
on these rules being enabled forever. And I suspect that some AUR helper
developers will do that if we say so in the release announcement (and do
not mention that relying on them is unsupported).