Re: git-version-gen not working with Savannah/cgit snapshots

[Dave Kemper]

On 6/19/22, G. Branden Robinson <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think that if GNU doesn't have the infrastructure or personnel to
> support these, then, yes, the Savannah administrators should fork (or
> just patch) cgit to the extent necessary to suppress the exposure of
> these snapshot download links.  I had no idea they weren't truly
> supported.  I can't be the only person who assumed that they were.

In fact, this has caused consternation at least once before for a
groff user (http://lists.gnu.org/r/groff/2021-05/msg00049.html).
That's just one recent thread I happened to remember; I didn't search
to see if there were others.  And we don't know how many people try
this, find it broken, and give up on it without saying anything.

Admittedly, part of the problem in that instance is that a groff
project page recommends these snapshots and links to Savannah's cgit
interface.  This is something that could be fixed on the groff page,
though I don't know who has the keys to www.gnu.org/software/groff.

> There doesn't seem to be a lot of support on the groff mailing list for
> this feature, either--at least one fellow developer has questioned why
> I'm expending the effort to document a procedure for building from
> snapshot archives, given that two other methods (Git checkouts and
> distribution archives) already exist.

I'm not a developer, but I also feel this way -- except that I also
agree with the point you made in that thread that if Savannah offers
these download links, we ought to make sure they work.  But it sounds
like no one wants to support them, and no one seems to be clamoring to
use them, so Savannah should probably just not have them.  Hopefully
this entails only a simple patch of cgit.  Or if someone wants to
lobby upstream, maybe cgit could make this a configuration option.