versioning TeXlive packages on CTAN

[Norbert Preining]

Hi Brook,

On Sat, 24 Aug 2019, Brook Milligan wrote:
> Pkgsrc already maintains copies of all the distfiles in use, including
> archived versions that are no longer available on the original distribution sites.

Ahh, I didn't know. So that is the problem.

But then, why don't you parse the texlive.tlpdb (in
tlnet/tlpkg/texlive.tlpdb) which contains the version numbers for all
packages? There are perl modules and full documentation for that.

You could on pkg build do
- parse tlpdb
- get version number of package foo
- if it is the first time, download and upload to your server
  (maybe changing the name on the fly)

Would that be an option?

This is what tlgmr does, it gets all the version numbers direct from the
tlpdb, which is **the** **authorative** source of information.

Example:

	name 2up
	category Package
	revision 41578
	...

The version we are using in TL is the revision number (because the real
version as reported by packages is not guaranteed to be strictly
increasing, while the revision which is computed from our subversion
repository is strictly increasing).

I think by parsing (using the Perl modules in tlnet/tlpkg/TeXLive, in
particular TLPDB.pm and TLPOBJ.pm (others you don't need to know)) the
tlpdb you can do everything already.

Let me know your opinion

Best

Norbert

--
PREINING Norbert                               http://www.preining.info
Accelia Inc. + IFMGA ProGuide + TU Wien + JAIST + TeX Live + Debian Dev
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