ncarg: switch NCAR graphics to automatic download

[amannucci (Anthony Mannucci)]

I am hitchhiking this ticket to propose a switch to automatic download of the sources. I will provide the patch, please evaluate it. The ticket becomes an enhancement.

original description:

NCAR graphics does not find source. The location of the files has been moved to the Earth System Grid. E.g. ​http://ngwww.ucar.edu/download.html

-Tony

[tenomoto (Takeshi Enomoto)]

Yes, you are right. But this is not a port bug. You have to agree the terms and manually download the source and place it in ${prefix}/var/macports/distfiles/ncarg. If not port raises an error

        ui_error "Download ${distname}${extract.suffix} manually and place it in ${distpath}.\n \
            See instructions on ${homepage}/Download/index.shtml"

[petrrr]

Cc Me!

[petrrr]

I am reopening this mainly as reminder.

Maybe it is not necessary to keep "manual download procedure" for UCAR software, which would simplify the situation quite a bit.

Technically, no confirmation is necessary for download. The license is somewhat confusing by citing the confirmation, but being otherwise permissive including redistribution. This was discussed in another occasion on the developer list. I recently had a short chat on this with one person from UCAR, and they seem to be willing to make access to their software easy. So I will follow up on this soon.

[petrrr]

I never got a reply to my inquiry on the license details. So I am not sure if we could implement fetching of the packages or if it would violate their license. Any thoughts? Should we just close?

[tenomoto (Takeshi Enomoto)]

I'll write to the NCL team to find if we can redistribute the source and/or binary.

[tenomoto (Takeshi Enomoto)]

Mary Haley of UCAR made me aware that registration is required no longer. The source file is, however, still hosted on earthsystemgrid and looks like

​https://www.earthsystemgrid.org/download/fileDownload.htm?logicalFileId=5995adf7-351e-11e4-a4b4-00c0f03d5b7c

The URL seem to be static. Can MacPorts handle a request like this? I'll confirm if we can redistribute the source and binary.

[petrrr]

Hi takeshi, this is what I tried to point out before. Technically we can now download automatically, and yes the URL can be handles, I have done some tests already and will provide a diff if needed.

Where I got stuck was with the license itself. IMHO the text is somewhat ambiguous and it cites registration/acknowledging the license which are gone as condition, for the rest it looks pretty free. However, when I asked for some clarification I never got a reply.

So if this can be clarified, we could switch to automatic download and distribution.

[tenomoto (Takeshi Enomoto)]

I haven't received any reply on redistribution, According to ​NCL source code license is based on Apache License 2.0, NCL itself should be redistributable. NCL, however, includes other software. Probably we need to list them in the license field. ​Triangle is more restrictive. We may have to make it a separate variant like szip.

[petrrr]

Well, actually realized that the initial part of all the license texts changed: It does NOT cite any registration and acknowledgement of the license any more. It explicitly allows redistribution in source and binary form.

For the port I conclude:

• We can fetch sources automatically;
• We can redistribute (mirror) sources;

Not sure what are the implications regarding license (in)compatibility and binary redistribution.

[petrrr]

What I am leave intentionally open is if the binaries are distributable. This is to be controlled by the licenses listed. I personally do not see an

[petrrr]

patch to switch to automatic download

[petrrr]

I attached a patch for review.

I would be great if this could be implemented. This would allow to build py-nio and py-ngl by the buildbots. Currently this fails because this dependency fails.

[petrrr]

Hi have you found time to evaluate this?

[tenomoto (Takeshi Enomoto)]

Sorry for slow response. Done in r134636.

[petrrr]

Thanks a lot!