Re: URL for forge packages

[Carnë Draug]

On 16 August 2012 13:18, Ben Abbott <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Aug 16, 2012, at 8:14 AM, Carnë Draug wrote:
>> Hi
>>
>> the current method to get the URL for packages when installing with
>> the -forge flag is to parse the HTML of the package for the version
>> and use it to generate a URL to download it. I see two problems with
>> this:
>>
>> 1. if we are to change the format of the documentation page this will
>> start failing
>> 2. if we move the packages to another host (as has been discussed
>> before), it will also fail
>>
>> While such changes are not planned to happen on OF soon, when they do
>> it will mean that users using octave versions before the change won't
>> be able to use the -forge flag. I think to prevent this before becomes
>> an issie it's a good idea.  I would like to propose to have a simple
>> text file on octave.org with this info. 1 line with package names and
>> their URLs would suffice. This would also make the code to get
>> packages from forge simpler since the parsing would also be simpler.
>>
>> Any comments?
>>
>> Carnë
>
> Sounds like a good idea to me.  Should there also be a way to locally 
> over-ride the web-site to allow packages not on OF to be installed 
> automatically?  Perhaps a local list of repositories/mirrors that can be 
> successively searched for the desired package?

The plan is to at least add an URL flag. Other suggestions are welcome.

Carnë