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Package release hosting

Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2009 9:42 pm
by Chris Corbyn
So I've dropped sourceforge due to general crappiness and have started to use more dedicated tools for each of my requirements.

I use github for code hosting and I use lighthouse for project management.

One thing I'm lacking that SF.net had is a way to release my work to the public as a tarball/zip file. github allows download of tags as zip or tar files, but they are blind copies of the repo and I would prefer to release a clean copy that doesn't includes things that are in my repo (such as buildfiles and jar files used in development).

I'm looking for a service to host my downloads that offers the following:

a) Easy to add a new release, along with release notes
b) Some sort of API (even if that's an RSS feed) to display available downloads on my own website and link to them
c) Statistics for download traffic. Sourceforge has pretty good download stats.

I'm not willing to use SF anymore... I'm tired of the crappy changes they keep making and their package release procedure is the most convoluted process in the world.

Perhaps Google Code? But is there a more dedicated service for this? It doesn't have to be free, though not expensive.

Re: Package release hosting

Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 1:30 am
by josh
Couldn't you just use a shell script and use your webstats package? Just a thought, you'd have to cover bandwidth that way but that's what I'd prefer to do.

Re: Package release hosting

Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 4:57 am
by Chris Corbyn
jshpro2 wrote:Couldn't you just use a shell script and use your webstats package? Just a thought, you'd have to cover bandwidth that way but that's what I'd prefer to do.
That's not what I'd prefer to do ;) Not when it comes to downloads like that. SF.net has mirrors all over the world for example. My VPS doesn't.

Google Code is looking like the best option so far, though I need to check if I'm breaching their terms by hosting the code on github and the downloads on Google Code.

Re: Package release hosting

Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 11:39 am
by josh
Torrent ftw! To be honest I'm suprised someone has made an opensource package management, maybe this is what trac does I don't know I never tried it out?

Re: Package release hosting

Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 2:32 pm
by alex.barylski
I'm not willing to use SF anymore... I'm tired of the crappy changes they keep making and their package release procedure is the most convoluted process in the world.
Here here... :drunk:

Not only does source forge suck but when you want to remove a project they seem to totally ignore your requests using every excuse in the book.

Re: Package release hosting

Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 2:45 pm
by jaoudestudios
If only we had time to setup our own system :)

Re: Package release hosting

Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 4:17 pm
by Chris Corbyn
Torrent would be useless. Perhaps you're misunderstanding me? This is basically for my projects like Swift Mailer, Kodify, Yay Mock...

On the website I'll have a list of links to the most recent releases (fetched via some API from the hosting service... currently I have some hacky code to parse an RSS feed from SF.net). When a user clicks on one of those links the download either needs to start right away, or the user should be presented with a list of mirrors, or a download agreement or something simple. Using torrent would cut out a huge chunk of users and it would not be easy to get proper download stats for (graphs of downloads per day, week, month, year).

Just looking at CodePlex, though it is written by Microsoft. It looks pretty good and the Terms of Service seem reasonable (looks like I can host my downloads there without hosting my repository there). I'll post back if I find anything else.

It's quite hard to google for what I'm looking for... you just get heaps of results for normal web hosting services.

Re: Package release hosting

Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 4:35 pm
by Chris Corbyn
I've contacted the github and the lighthouse guys... they may have some ideas.

Re: Package release hosting

Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 4:38 pm
by pickle
Freshmeat is one I see every once in a while.

Re: Package release hosting

Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 5:21 pm
by Chris Corbyn
I've used them before an from what I recall, they don't host the downloads they just link to them. I'll check again though :)

Re: Package release hosting

Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2009 7:13 pm
by Chris Corbyn
I wonder if this may be of use:

http://www.getdropbox.com/

Since they're in beta I've contacted the author to explain my use case and ask for a couple of things.

Either way, it looks like a neat project with 2GB free space and additional paid space.