httping: Update to 2.9

[jblaufuss]

The httping port version appears out of date (currently 2.5, while the latest appears to be 2.9) and strangely references an Wayback Machine archive page (​https://web.archive.org/web/20201108093618/https://www.vanheusden.com/httping/, which oddly seems more up-to-date than the current version of that page). This appears to be the current site for the HTTPing utility: ​https://github.com/folkertvanheusden/HTTPing (GitHub users appears to be the same guy).

Homebrew references the above site with version 2.9: ​https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/httping

Here's a snapshot of the MacPorts page at the time I'm writing this bug: ​https://web.archive.org/web/20230531181757/https://ports.macports.org/port/httping/

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

The fact that the port references the wayback machine copy of the homepage isn't meant to be strange; we can see from the commit message when that change was made in 2021 that the homepage and the flok99 GitHub account mentioned on it were nonexistent at that time. I agree that a new GitHub account and repository now exist, from which a 2.9 release was made in 2022, and thanks for letting us know about that, however I have numerous concerns about it, which I've reported in ​a comment on an issue in the new repository but I'll reproduce my concerns here:

Why was the previous GitHub repository and the entire GitHub account flok99 removed?

Why was the project resumed?

Why does this new repository contain only 11 commits and 1 tag? What happened to the 337 commits and 15 tags from the old repository?

Why does the ​current homepage appear outdated compared to the ​2021 version of the homepage? (The 2021 homepage stated the current version was 2.5; the current homepage says the current version is 1.5.)

What changed between versions 2.5 and 2.9? What happened to versions 2.6, 2.7, and 2.8? I can't check the nonexistent commit history or tags and there is no changelog or news file. I looked at the diff between the 2.5 and 2.9 tarballs, which fortunately wasn't too large, and I didn't see too many changes, though I do notice the license file changed from AGPL 3 with OpenSSL exception to GPL 3 with no mention of OpenSSL exception. I don't see an indication of whether this is intended to be GPL-3-only or GPL-3-or-later. The comments at the tops of the source files have not been adjusted and still say AGPL 3 with OpenSSL exception. The GPL 3 license file looks like it could have been a mistake, since it was committed by itself as the first commit in the new repo.

I tried to get the answers to these questions by following the link on the homepage to a discussion mailing list, but it's 404 not found. The last post on the ​archived version of that discussion list was from the release of version 2.4, too old to answer my questions.

The current readme only has 4 non-empty lines, 2 of which are broken images to broken links. The version 2.5 readme was 47 lines long and contained useful installation and usage information.

All of this and the lack of a provided explanation for it is very suspicious and makes me very wary of switching httping in MacPorts to this new source.

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

The developer ​commented quickly but didn't answer most of my questions. I'll give them some time; maybe they'll have more to say later.

Here's a PR to update the port: ​https://github.com/macports/macports-ports/pull/18909

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

In 7a967aa02edf81cf6958fa8b29492e8beba42b51/macports-ports (master):

httping: Update to 2.9

Closes: #67541