Sender: Vik DOT Heyndrickx AT rug DOT ac DOT be
Message-ID: <358F6F0C.2C52@rug.ac.be>
Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1998 11:02:04 +0200
From: Vik Heyndrickx <Vik DOT Heyndrickx AT rug DOT ac DOT be>
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: DJ Delorie <dj AT delorie DOT com>
CC: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: [fdonahoe AT wilkes1 DOT wilkes DOT edu: Patch Level in /v2gnu]
References: <199806211330 DOT JAA12125 AT delorie DOT com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Precedence: bulk

Frank Donahoe wrote:
> I do not think the date on the archive is a convenient way to distinguish
> one patch level from another.  Ordinary "ftp" resets the time stamp to
> the date of retrieval and in any event the date on the archive is not
> the same as the date of the latest file in the archive.  Routinely I
> reset the time stamp of the archives to this "latest date" by using the
> "-o" option to "zip" or the "-T" option to "unzip".  In the example
> cited above, "lgp2811s.zip" bore the date May 6, 22:33 while the internal
> date is April 29, 20:37:16.  (My local time, EST, if everything is
> working.)

Yet another problem is that some mirror sites do not preserve the date
and time, but set it to the time the file was mirrored.

I cannot hand in a solution other than what Frank Donahue suggests, but
when the long filenames are truncated to 8+3 the patchlevel should be
stripped to preserve consistency. In addition to this a
``patchlevel''/``patchlev'' file within the archive (in mft/?) would
give to opportunity to always be able to determine the patchlevel even
when the filename was stripped.
I also suggested that archive files that are the first build remain in
their current format. After all, most archives have only 1 build.

Just to get some feeling:
  "v2/alphas/980101/djlsr202-alpha980101.zip"
  "v2gnu/mak3769b.zip"
  "v2gnu/mak3769b-rebuild1.zip"
  "v2gnu/bnu27b__.zip"

-- 
 \ Vik /-_-_-_-_-_-_/
  \___/ Heyndrickx /
   \ /-_-_-_-_-_-_/  Knight in the Order of the Unsigned Types