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How to build Avoid master_sites Redirects

• Audience: Portfile authors
• Requires: MacPorts >=2.0

Introduction

In order to be a good 'Net citizen, it is worthwhile to minimize the load on other's servers. One simple technique is to specify the master_sites parameter as specifically as possible so that the other side does not have to supply redirects in order to serve the file we want. This how-to currently addresses only SourceForge.

SourceForge

Hopefully, the following example, using mediainfo version 0.7.60, will illuminate the process. The SourceForge home page for mediainfo is ​http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net. Initially, just specifying 'sourceforge' in the portfile under development worked to retrieve the distfile.

master_sites  sourceforge

The log for 'port fetch' showed:

DEBUG: Executing org.macports.fetch (mediainfo)
--->  MediaInfo_CLI_0.7.60_GNU_FromSource.tar.bz2 doesn't seem to exist in /opt/local/var/macports/distfiles/mediainfo
--->  Attempting to fetch MediaInfo_CLI_0.7.60_GNU_FromSource.tar.bz2 from http://iweb.dl.sourceforge.net/mediainfo

Use curl -IL http://iweb.dl.sourceforge.net/mediainfo/MediaInfo_CLI_0.7.60_GNU_FromSource.tar.bz2 to check for redirects. In this case the output indicated redirects to a final address of:

Location: http://voxel.dl.sourceforge.net/project/mediainfo/binary/mediainfo/0.7.60/MediaInfo_CLI_0.7.60_GNU_FromSource.tar.bz2

To improve the master_sites parameter, extract the bit: project/mediainfo/binary/mediainfo/0.7.60 (and replace "0.7.60"--the version number in this case--with ${version}). Thus you have:

master_sites  sourceforge:project/mediainfo/binary/mediainfo/${version}

Pat yourself on the back--you're done!

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