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From: "Tim Anderson" <tma@netspace.net.au>
To: <repository@apache.org>
Subject: RE: Use of '/' in ???-specifier's
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 05:15:27 +1100
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> From: Nick Chalko [mailto:nick@chalko.com]
>
> Tim Anderson wrote:
>
> >For advocates of URI parsing, what problems are you trying
> >to solve?

>     * Discovery of  "what is available"
>     * Repository exploring.
>     * Auto cleanup of repositories.
>
> The URI spec is too loose.
>
> As far as I can tell these are legal
>
> http://repo.apache.org/alpha/alpha/alpha/alpha/alpha/alpha.jar
> http://repo.apache.org/1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9.jar
>
> We really need to harden the URI spec a little and the "/"  is a
> good start.
>

The above a legal for the URI Syntax proposal [1], but illegal
according to the common build version [2] and java artifact specifiers [3].
Tools based on [2] & [3] should ignore them.

Is it simply a matter of restricting organisation back to a single
path segment? This would allow product-specifier to be determined
by parsers.
Note that this was the original approach, but some people expressed a
desire to be able to break down the hierarchy using reverse-FQDNs.

As for auto cleanup, this is supported in part by:
. version-specifier in [1]
  "All repository URIs must include a version in the path. This:
  . ensures all artifacts for a particular version are grouped together
  . simplifies archival of artifacts for a particular version"

. interim-build in [2]
  This assigns timestamps for interim builds (nightly, snapshot etc)

The repository would have to limit version naming schemes to
numeric schemes to support auto cleanup fully, which is too restrictive IMO.

-Tim

[1] http://nagoya.apache.org/wiki/apachewiki.cgi?ASFRepository/Proposals
[2]
http://nagoya.apache.org/wiki/apachewiki.cgi?ASFRepository/CommonBuildVersio
nSpecifier
[3] http://nagoya.apache.org/wiki/apachewiki.cgi?ASFRepository/JavaArtifacts