symlinks to releases

[Michael Shiloh]

Ferenc Veres wrote:
> Hi
> 
> Is it really necessary to have date-less symlinks to versions?
> 
> [   ] Om2008.9.rootfs.jffs2                 19-Sep-2008 15:55   68M
> [   ] Om2008.9.rootfs.tar.gz                19-Sep-2008 16:03   49M
> [   ] Om2008.9.splash.gz                    03-Sep-2008 21:58  2.4K
> [   ] Om2008.9.uImage.bin
> 
> A few weeks ago someone sent a mail here, that download directories are 
> confusing. I thought, he refers to the old directories with 30-50 files, 
> you remember, daily snapshots of ASU and 2007.2 for both phones plus 
> uboot, etc... But NO! He referred to a simple directory like this (or 
> maybe a bit longer one):
> 
> http://downloads.openmoko.org/releases/Om2008.9/
> 
> (2008.9 -> so same problem again, that's why I bring it up again)
> 
> Discussion?

I agree. Let's get rid of the symbolic links to the latest release.

Especially when there is no way to know that they are symbolic links, so 
the only hint is to see the same timestamp and size on the latest file, 
which is certainly not conclusive. (I would feel differently if the 
symbolic link was clearly identified, and listed what it linked to, like 
  ls -l).

The two problems I can imagine is if any wiki pages reference the 
symbolic links, which we should fix, or if any scripts make use of the 
symbolic links, which seems a little risky to me.

Anyone technical enough to be flashing these files should be able to 
understand that the latest one is -um- the latest one, and we should 
explain this in the wiki page and in the readme or whatever that shows 
up in the download directory.

In fact, we can use a more useful README.html, which will explain this 
(and any other information we think necessary). This won't help anyone 
doing a wget, but will be visible to most readers who will visit the 
download page in their browser.

Michael