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GLEP 43: GLEP File Hosting

Author Ciaran McCreesh <[email protected]>
Type Informational
Status Final
Version 1
Created 2005-11-07
Last modified 2014-01-23
Posting history 2005-11-07
GLEP source glep-0043.rst

Abstract

This GLEP proposes the creation of a reliable hosting location for data (e.g. sample code) associated with GLEPs.

Status

This GLEP has been approved by the GLEP editor and marked Final on 2005-11-13.

Motivation

Some GLEPs come with non-trivial example files or code which are part of the specification. There are two methods which have been used to handle this previously:

  • Include the code inline in the GLEP using a code (::) segment. This is less than ideal for larger code samples as it leads to considerable clutter.
  • Place the files on a developer's webspace on dev.gentoo.org. This is not particularly reliable -- developers may leave or accidentally restructure their webspace, and a GLEP is intended to be a permanent specification.

This GLEP proposes that GLEP authors be allowed to make use of the main Gentoo webserver for hosting content relevant to their GLEP.

Important

The hosting proposed is for files related to the proposal (e.g. example code which clarifies part of the specification), not a full implementation of the proposal.

Specification

Once a GLEP number has been allocated, developers (or the GLEP editors) may create a directory in CVS named glep-xxxx-extras/ (where xxxx is the GLEP's number) under the main GLEP directory. This directory may be used by files which are part of the proposal.

Any hyperlinks to files inside this directory should use relative paths. This prevents breakages in the case of directory structure changes.

GLEPs which use this directory may include an 'Example Files' heading with a list of links to the associated files.

Example

Consider the following GLEP segment, which has been taken from a draft of GLEP 42 [1]:

Example News Item
'''''''''''''''''

The following hypothetical news item could be used for an upgrade to the
``YourSQL`` database format which breaks forward compatibility. It should be
named ``2005-11/2005-11-01-yoursql-upgrades.en.txt``.

::

    # Lots and lots of lines of example news item

The news item in question is clearly part of the proposal, but including it inline is messy. Under this proposal, the main GLEP segment would read:

Example News Item
'''''''''''''''''

`This hypothetical news item`__ could be used for an upgrade to the
``YourSQL`` database format which breaks forward compatibility. It would be
named ``2005-11/2005-11-01-yoursql-upgrades.en.txt``.

.. __: glep-0042-extras/example-news-item.txt

The example news item would then be placed in glep-0042-extras/example-news-item.txt.

Similar changes would be made for the longer example code segments. The GLEP could also gain a new section along the lines of:

Example Files
=============

`example-news-item.txt <glep-0042-extras/example-news-item.txt>`_
    An example news item.
`news-mailer.bash <glep-0042-extras/news-mailer.bash>`_
    A ``bash`` script which delivers news items via email.

Backwards Compatibility

Not an issue.

References

[1]GLEP 42: Critical news reporting, Ciaran McCreesh, https://www.gentoo.org/glep/glep-0042.html