alpine fails to fetch

[jwmparker]

MacPorts states (correctly) that the most current version of alpine is 2.21 :

% port info alpine
alpine @2.21 (mail)

However, when it goes to the various sites to try to fetch alpine, it fails:

% sudo port install alpine
--->  Computing dependencies for alpine
--->  Fetching distfiles for alpine
--->  Attempting to fetch alpine-2.21.tar.xz from https://distfiles.macports.org/alpine
...[and it tries many more sites]...
Error: Failed to fetch alpine: Connection timed out after 30003 milliseconds

Looking at all the sites that MacPorts tries to fetch from, some don't exist, but in others they don't have version 2.21 - they only have the older version 2.20, which is why the fetch fails for a file named alpine-2.21.tar.xz

[mf2k (Frank Schima)]

In the future, please Cc the port maintainers (port info --maintainers alpine).

[jcvernaleo (John C. Vernaleo)]

Looks like the old location for the alpine sources (​http://alpine.freeiz.com/alpine/release/src) is gone.

I'm looking to see if there is a stable source somewhere and if not I'll just host the sources myself.

Either way I'll have a PR to fix the port real soon.

[jcvernaleo (John C. Vernaleo)]

Couldn't find anything stable or seemingly canonical left so decided to host myself.

​https://github.com/macports/macports-ports/pull/1194

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

I've added the file to the MacPorts mirror; it should be public within the hour.

[jerryyhom]

The git repo for the source is ​http://repo.or.cz/alpine.git.

[jcvernaleo (John C. Vernaleo)]

Good to know about the repo. One problem I see with that is that it does not seem to host any of the archives we can just grab.

Does macports provide a way to use a git repo and specify a git commit or tag in place of a version number (similar to ${GIT_COMMIT} and ${GIT_TAG} in openbsd ports?

[jerryyhom]

Yes, use the fetch from git ​https://guide.macports.org/#reference.phases.fetch.git.

[jcvernaleo (John C. Vernaleo)]

Cool.

Since this is a bit of a difference from what we are currently doing (and I need to confirm that the git checkout matches the tarball we were using) I think we should get the current version of the PR in and then I can switch it to using the git repo unless you object. That would be a good time to update to the lasted version too.

[jerryyhom]

Ryan already made the distfile available on macports, so it is probably okay for most people in the near term. Updating the portfile's URL to the code source would be the proper fix.

Unless the proper fix would take a very long time to produce, I do not see the usefulness of your current PR; I would not want to create extra work for the admins as a side step.

The latest version is 2.21, which the portfile already has.

[jcvernaleo (John C. Vernaleo)]

Since the upstream no long provides tarballs should I completely remove:

master_site
use_xz              yes
checksums           rmd160  627002cea8fecb2e4f418ff6f94e89e9b334c474 \
                    sha256  6030b6881b8168546756ab3a5e43628d8d564539b0476578e287775573a77438

and replace with the git stuff

fetch.type          git
git.url             http://repo.or.cz/alpine.git
git.branch          672d6838a9babf2faeb9f79267525a4ab9d20b14

or should I leave the checksums in there so it can grab from the macports distfile site? The docs don't give much advice there other than warning against SCM fetch types since they may not be reproducible (although using a commits as a branch should fix that).

That commit is the one that matches the tarball by the way.

[jerryyhom]

The git repo does have tarballs, such as ​http://repo.or.cz/alpine.git/snapshot/672d6838a9babf2faeb9f79267525a4ab9d20b14.tar.gz. I think you are well on your way, and a little bit of testing will provide the remaining answers you need (and better than I can give).

What are SCM fetch types?

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

Don't have a portfile fetch from git unless there is no alternative. Fetching from a distfile is preferable (because we can mirror a distfile, and a user can cache it). The port already does that, so let's not change it.

If in the future a new version is released, and it is only available via the aforementioned git snapshot tarball, then the port can be updated to use that.

For now, we should just merge ​PR 1194 when it's ready.

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

Somebody should ask the developer of alpine where the web site went.

[jcvernaleo (John C. Vernaleo)]

I already emailed the upstream maintainer to see if there was a new webpage. Haven't heard back yet (but the code only lists the git repo so there may not be a new page).

[jcvernaleo (John C. Vernaleo)]

There have been a bunch of commits to the repo since 2.21 so I will keep an eye on it to update things once 2.22 comes out.

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

The PR was merged.