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From:	Michael Ring <m DOT ring AT ndh DOT net>
To:	cygwin-developers AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com
Subject:	How to find out if something has changed in the latest directory
Date:	Thu, 20 Apr 2000 10:36:41 +0200
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Today I browsed the cygwin/latest ftp-directory to find out if
something has changed / new versions arrived.

Finding out that setup.exe has changed was easy because the file date
was newer and size did change.

Also the cygwin directory has changed and also tcltk.

In tcltk only the md5.sum file seems to have changed but
tcltk-src.tar.gz and tcltk.tar,gz are also having an actual date. My
ftp-client told me that size of files is identical, so chances are
good that they are identical.

After browsing the list I did not find any clue to a new cygwin
version and perhaps a clue that only the md5.sum was regenerated.

In the past I also found out that sometimes files in the 485-snapshot
subdirectories changed in size but the directory itself kept the old
date. 

This does not make it easy to quickly find out if a file has changed.

So here are a few proposals:

Perhaps an information could be posted to cygwin-announce (or cygwin)
everytime that something has changed in the distribution. If posting a
mail to cygwin there should be something like a standard header 
(cygwin/latest updated : tcltk.tar.gz ..)

Perhaps a small script could be used to make sure that the
directory-date reflects the date of the newest file in a subdirectory.
If you want me to, I will look into writing a script for that.

The best solution is in my point the following:

Invent version numbers! Files could be named like that:
bash-2.03-1-cygwin-bin.tar.gz
	for a binary release of bash
 
bash-2.03-1-cygwin-src.tar.gz
	for a source that is not the original version, but a patched
	version out of cygwin's CVS
Software that can be build out of original sources (or can easily be
patched) should have the original name of the distribution.

example:

bash-2.04.tar.gz 
	( The version that comes from ftp.gnu.org )
and
bash-2.04-cygwin.patch 
	for the patch-file that makes bash compile unter cygwin.

Something like this approach should also take care of the
directory-dates (because directory entries definetely change) unless
the cygwin ftp-server is not completely braindead...

How does the rest think about this approach ? (I will be happy to help
out if help is needed to implement changes like the ones I have
proposed)

Michael Ring

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