Re: [gentoo-dev] Problem: HOWTOs archive versions

[Dan Armak <danarmak@gentoo.org>]

On Sunday 29 July 2001 02:38, you wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 28, 2001 at 08:35:54PM +0300, Dan Armak wrote:
> > > Best solution for right now is to create our own version of the archive
> > > with a timestamp, and write the linuxdoc people to create these
> > > archives with a timestamp (20010728, for example) as the version
> > > number:
> > >
> > > linux-howto-20010728.tar.gz
> >
> > OK, but I forgot to introduce the more important question: what about
> > checksums (i.e. message digests)? Should we check for & create a new
> > ebuild for a new timestamp every week or so, or should we override
> > checksums? And how do you override them?
>
> Nothing special needs to be done with the message digests.  We just upload
> the file to our ibiblio mirror.
>

I've been talking with a man from the LDP. Apparently these archives are 
updated at least every few days, and potentially whenever any individual 
howto is updated. So, we can either override checksums - that is, tell 
portage no checksums are needed, as long as the archives exctracts correctly. 
Or, we can generate the correct checksum on-the-fly from within the ebuild 
and have portage reference that. Finally, we might have a program on the 
gentoo server that would check for new versions every day and update the 
checksums, but it's making too big a deal of it. 

As for versioning: I believe (I'm still waiting for the LDP guy's 
confirmation) that an index file inside the archive is always autogenerated 
when the archive is autogenerated. We can use its mtime data to add a 
timestamp as an ebuild version.
Is there a problem with setting/overriding PV from within an ebuild?

-- 

Dan Armak
Gentoo Linux Developer
Matan, Israel