Workaround for broken distfiles, please

[yaseppochi (Stephen J. Turnbull)]

WIBNI when encountering a checksum mismatch, port would attempt to download the distfile (or whatever) again, and cmp with the broken original if that fails? Deleting the file is a PITA, and sufficiently infrequent that about half the time it really is breakage in the portfile.

[mf2k (Frank Schima)]

This does not clearly describe a Macports problem.

[raimue (Rainer Müller)]

Please see FAQ

[blb@…]

Half the time? I'd say the vast majority of checksum issues falls into three categories:

• corrupted download
• stealth upgrade upstream
• bad mirror

From a user point of view, I can see how one may say the stealth upgrade could be port breakage, but it's really upstream not doing properly release management. The bad mirror is a good case to report since we would need to remove that mirror from being used in the future.

Deleting the file shouldn't be a pain at all, just sudo port clean --all <portname> as the aforementioned FAQ notes.

[yaseppochi (Stephen J. Turnbull)]

Replying to blb@…:

Half the time? I'd say the vast majority of checksum issues falls into three categories:

You evidently aren't dealing with the same ports I am. I don't remember which it was offhand, but one recently went from x.y to x.y_5 in the space of 3 or 4 days due to checksum screwage (repeatedly).

• corrupted download
• stealth upgrade upstream
• bad mirror

From a user point of view,

You don't pass this time, but thanks for trying. It would be really refreshing to get a response from the user point of view for once.

I can see how one may say the stealth upgrade could be port breakage,

I didn't say it was port breakage; IIRC I tried to find a way to say "request for enhancement" but the best I could do was "wouldn't it be nice if" in the description. An alternative would be for MacPorts to delete a file if it had a bad checksum, and let me try again later. In any case, it requires black magic to get MacPorts to use that file except in the case where the port maintainer snafu'd and managed to commit a portfile with broken check sums, which you apparently believe it pretty rare. If you believe that, then you believe the downloaded file is unusable and needs to be redownloaded.

but it's really upstream not doing properly release management. The bad mirror is a good case to report since we would need to remove that mirror from being used in the future.

If I were reporting breakage in a particular port, I would refer to the particular port. This is an RFE for port itself.

Deleting the file shouldn't be a pain at all, just sudo port clean --all <portname> as the aforementioned FAQ notes.

No way! That costs me all my backups, in case I don't like this version. I need to know how to clean *only* the distribution files for a *particular version*. this is rare enough that I'm not going to remember, so I'm asking for port to do that for me. Port knows the file is broken *now*, but then later it just runs the checksum again, and gets the same result. That's dumb.