by-author vs. by-module URLs in debian/watch

Damyan Ivanov · External Since: May 28, 2006 Posts: 96

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Hi,

During the hacking of versioncheck.pl. I noticed that debian/watch files
of our packages contain by-author and by-module CPAN directories in a
semi-random fashion.

I think, we should stick with by-module usage.

Why: because otherwise uscan would miss when newer version is available
from different author.

Wny not: by-module directories are usually longer. This would increase
the load on CPAN mirrors (slightly) and the DEHS machine (more
important, I guess). The versioncheck.pl's performance would not be
affected by the change (same for alioth).

I can make the change group-wide, although, I prefer to do this with
group agreement. Smile

What do you think?
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Bart Martens · External Since: Apr 17, 2006 Posts: 315

On Sun, 2007-08-05 at 11:33 +0300, Damyan Ivanov wrote:
> Hi,
>
> During the hacking of versioncheck.pl. I noticed that debian/watch files
> of our packages contain by-author and by-module CPAN directories in a
> semi-random fashion.
>
> I think, we should stick with by-module usage.
>
> Why: because otherwise uscan would miss when newer version is available
> from different author.

Yes, I've seen that happen.

>
> Wny not: by-module directories are usually longer. This would increase
> the load on CPAN mirrors (slightly) and the DEHS machine (more
> important, I guess). The versioncheck.pl's performance would not be
> affected by the change (same for alioth).

Another reason for why not: The directories "by-module" seem to lag
behind. For example:

These have version 0.9:
http://packages.qa.debian.org/libc/libclass-dbi-pg-perl.html
http://search.cpan.org/~dmaki/Class-DBI-Pg/

But here the newest version is 0.8:
http://cpan.org/modules/by-module/Class/

I have not yet scanned all Perl modules in Debian to see how big this
problem at CPAN is.

>
> I can make the change group-wide, although, I prefer to do this with
> group agreement. Smile

I'm not part of the group, but I'm so arrogant to push my thoughts here
anyway. Smile

> What do you think?

I think that a "per package" approach is best, so a debian/watch file
per package with "by-module" or with "authors/id" depending on what fits
best for the package. I think however that "by-module" is a very
reasonable general default.

Regards,

Bart Martens

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Damyan Ivanov · External Since: May 28, 2006 Posts: 96

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- -=| Bart Martens, 5.08.2007 14:48 |=-
> Another reason for why not: The directories "by-module" seem to lag
> behind. For example:
>
> These have version 0.9:
> http://packages.qa.debian.org/libc/libclass-dbi-pg-perl.html
> http://search.cpan.org/~dmaki/Class-DBI-Pg/
>
> But here the newest version is 0.8:
> http://cpan.org/modules/by-module/Class/
>
> I have not yet scanned all Perl modules in Debian to see how big this
> problem at CPAN is.

Ouch! Existence of such exceptions makes the whole idea of using only
by-module URLs inappropriate.

I guess the most authoritative source of module version information
would be http://search.cpan.org/searcg?query=$module&mode=module but
using this for all 360 DPG packages would be dead slow.

> I'm not part of the group, but I'm so arrogant to push my thoughts here
> anyway. Smile

Your input is valuable. Thanks!

> I think that a "per package" approach is best, so a debian/watch file
> per package with "by-module" or with "authors/id" depending on what fits
> best for the package. I think however that "by-module" is a very
> reasonable general default.

This pretty much is the current state and I agree it is a reasonable
approach. Perhaps we can move to by-module-is-preferred approach, but
only after making sure this does more good than harm.
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Andreas J. Koenig · External Since: Aug 05, 2007 Posts: 1

>>>>> On Sun, 05 Aug 2007 21:13:14 +0300, Damyan Ivanov <dam DeleteThis @modsoftsys.com> said:

di> -=| Bart Martens, 5.08.2007 14:48 |=-
>> Another reason for why not: The directories "by-module" seem to lag
>> behind. For example:
>>
>> These have version 0.9:
>> http://packages.qa.debian.org/libc/libclass-dbi-pg-perl.html
>> http://search.cpan.org/~dmaki/Class-DBI-Pg/
>>
>> But here the newest version is 0.8:
>> http://cpan.org/modules/by-module/Class/
>>
>> I have not yet scanned all Perl modules in Debian to see how big this
>> problem at CPAN is.

di> Ouch! Existence of such exceptions makes the whole idea of using only
di> by-module URLs inappropriate.

di> I guess the most authoritative source of module version information
di> would be http://search.cpan.org/searcg?query=$module&mode=module but
di> using this for all 360 DPG packages would be dead slow.

Authoritative are the index files modules/02packages.details.txt.gz
and neighbors. Let me know if you need more information thatn you can
find there.

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andreas

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Gunnar Wolf · External Since: Nov 12, 2004 Posts: 200

Damyan Ivanov dijo [Sun, Aug 05, 2007 at 11:33:11AM +0300]:
> During the hacking of versioncheck.pl. I noticed that debian/watch files
> of our packages contain by-author and by-module CPAN directories in a
> semi-random fashion.
>
> I think, we should stick with by-module usage.
>
> Why: because otherwise uscan would miss when newer version is available
> from different author.
>
> Wny not: by-module directories are usually longer. This would increase
> the load on CPAN mirrors (slightly) and the DEHS machine (more
> important, I guess). The versioncheck.pl's performance would not be
> affected by the change (same for alioth).
>
> I can make the change group-wide, although, I prefer to do this with
> group agreement. Smile

I completely agree - In fact, I've done _some_ of those changes,
usually when first adopting a package. I do find more important the
correctness of the information given by by-module than a small extra
penalty that comes from managing a large directory; modules'
maintainership can be transferred between CPAN maintainers, and
tracking an inactive author is not fun Smile

....Anyway, I would expect main CPAN mirrors to have the directories
cached, and the rendered pages are not so massive as to swamp DEHS
either. Oh, and I think DEHS might (should?) also be caching them, as
many modules are at the same directories.

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