easy_installability of older bzr releases.

[Wouter van Heyst]

On Fri, May 01, 2009 at 11:05:48AM +1000, Martin Pool wrote:
> 2009/5/1 Wouter van Heyst <larstiq at larstiq.dyndns.org>:
> > I see 4 possible solutions:
> >
> >    1) attach files to every release on pypi we still care about
> >    2) change the release process to have setup.py download location
> >        point at a specific to that release location
> >    3) change (or add to) the general download url to
> >        https://edge.launchpad.net/bzr/+download
> 
> (I guess it should actually be without the 'edge.' which points you to
> the beta site.)

Ah yes, ever since edge started redirecting non-beta users to the
non-beta site I've become sloppier with editing edge out.

> 
> >    4) change http://bazaar-vcs.org/Download to include links for older
> >        releases
> >
> >
> > The effect of 3) or 4) can be seen with
> >
> >    testenv/bin/easy_install bzr==1.12 -f https://edge.launchpad.net/bzr/+download
> >
> >
> > Each option has drawbacks, I think 4) would suit us best with a
> > TurboGears like approach (http://turbogears.org/download/) of having a
> > style=display:none list of releases, but couldn't figure out in the
> > moment how to get that done on moinmoin.
> 
> So easy_install scans through the html of the download page to try to
> find the right file?  How clever.
> 
> I like the sound of #3 more.  If the metadata is intended to point to
> a place where all old releases can be obtained then doing so in a way
> that works for machines but not for people would be a bit weird.

I don't know if pypi supports two download urls, that would be good to
test.  If it doesn't, do we want to forego our Downloads page in favour
of the launchpad listing?  I wouldn't at the moment, which is why I
favour 4).

People unlike easy_install can follow an additional level of indirection
to get at the older releases.  Maybe I should check easy_install can't
do that.

Wouter van Heyst