[Slackbuilds-users] suggestion for READMEs

[B Watson]

On 10/21/15, Erik Hanson <erik at slackbuilds.org> wrote:

> We already require direct download links, which I think implies an
> ability to download via typical command line tools.

Maybe it should be spelled out explicitly? Something like:

---
  If your download URL(s) can't be downloaded with a command like this:

  ( . ./*.info ; wget "$DOWNLOAD" )

  ...then you should find a different URL, if you can (hint: try a google
  search for the md5sum). If the file's not available from any other
  site, consider hosting it yourself, or asking on the mailing list for
  someone to host the file. If this is impossible due to licensing terms
  (no 3rd party distribution allowed), please make a note in your README
  that says something like:

  | The source must be downloaded interactively with a web browser, and will
  | not work with wget or sbopkg.

  If the site requires registration, please mention this fact as well.
---

...also, I wish there were some other guidelines about URLs. I've been
working on a download-bot, and run into a few other things:

- Dropbox URLs actually *can* be downloaded directly, if ?dl=1 is added to
the end. I tried 8 or 10 of these, and in all cases, wget was able to get
the file... Though it saves it with the ?dl=1 as part of the filename,
so the SlackBuild should be prepared to deal with that. Currently none
of the dropbox.com links on SBo have ?dl=1 at the end (one of them even
has ?dl=0).

This affects these builds:

academic/GeoGebra
academic/smath-studio
audio/xmms-wma
desktop/awoken-icon-theme
desktop/murrine-themes
desktop/obshutdown
desktop/openbox-simple-theme
desktop/siva-flat-themes
desktop/skippy-xd
desktop/slack-wallpapers
development/simulavr
games/vcmi-resolutions
graphics/rawstudio
libraries/muParser
multimedia/cueplayer
multimedia/gpac
multimedia/shotcut
multimedia/tabu_audio_player
network/fail2ban
network/freerapid
network/offlineimap
system/zuluCrypt

- Sourceforge URLs should never mention a specific mirror site,
only "downloads.sourceforge.net" or "projectname.sourceforge.net"
(I'm not actually sure which is better, myself). Links that include
<sitename>.dl.sourceforge.net can and will break, when they stop being
part of sourceforge's pool of mirrors.

This isn't theoretical, 3 of the SF mirrors (garr, hivelocity,
softlayer-dal) listed in SBo download links are no longer resolvable,
which breaks the download links for:

academic/labplot2
development/cppcms
development/cppdb
libraries/collada-dom
network/wput

> There may be a few exceptions, such as jdk (truecrypt was, at some
> point) but I think we'd be better to not allow any more in the future.

Right... So long as the README makes it clear, and whoever's doing the
approval (Willy, likely) is aware of it, there's no issue for us users.

In a few cases, where there's a restrictive "no 3rd party distribution"
license like the jdk has, it's the only possibility (other than "no SBo
build at all").