Re: maint.mk suggestion for gnupload

[Simon Josefsson]

Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com> writes:

> It was pointed out to me that for multiple years, m4's
> 'm4-latest.tar.XX' links were out of date at https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/m4/
> - the links were created in in 2013 when I released m4-1.4.17, but never
> updated in 2016 when I released m4-1.4.18.
>
> I managed to fix the latest links today with:
>
> $ build-aux/gnupload --to ftp.gnu.org:m4 \
>   --symlink m4-1.4.18.tar.gz m4-latest.tar.gz \
>   --symlink m4-1.4.18.tar.gz.sig m4-latest.tar.gz.sig \
>   --symlink m4-1.4.18.tar.bz2 m4-latest.tar.bz2 \
>   --symlink m4-1.4.18.tar.bz2.sig m4-latest.tar.bz2.sig \
>   --symlink m4-1.4.18.tar.xz m4-latest.tar.xz \
>   --symlink m4-1.4.18.tar.xz.sig m4-latest.tar.xz.sig
>
> but it would be a lot nicer if I didn't have to remember to do that
> after the fact.  In fact, reading gnupload --help says it is as simple
> as calling:
>
> $ gnupload --to ... --symlink-regex ...
>
> in the first place.  But --symlink-regex is not listed in the suggested
> output of 'make beta' or 'make stable' from maint.mk, which is why I
> missed that simpler step back in 2016, and nearly missed it again today
> when I did the m4-1.4.18b beta release.  Is it worth patching maint.mk
> to add --symlink-regex in the suggested gnupload instructions it generates?

Yes, please.  I'm sure I would make the same mistake if an old
*-latest.* symlink existed for some project.

I think the symlinks are problematic because the version number isn't
recorded in the tarball filename if anyone downloads the
m4-latest.tar.gz files.  So I wouldn't recommended new projects to
create them.  Can the patch be done in a way that we don't cause all
projects to create these symlinks?

Perhaps a compromise would be to extend maint.mk to make it possibly to
opt-in for *-latest.* support in cfg.mk, but cause the default behaviour
to be off by default.  If people agree with me that *-latest.* symlinks
are a bad idea, that is, which I'm not certain off.

/Simon

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