python / release-tools

Scripts for making (C)Python releases
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Enable a `latest` symlink on the ftp index #145

Open cmaureir opened 4 months ago

cmaureir commented 4 months ago

Hello all :wave: I recently talked with a friend of mine (@sdelquin) and he has a specific use-case for the ftp directory on his Python seminars and usually the students are requested to download "the latest Python version" from the command-line, from which he developed a little ad-hoc script to get such function:

PYTHON_LATEST=`curl -s https://www.python.org/downloads/ | gunzip -c | grep latest | perl -nle 'print $1 if /(\d+\.\d+\.\d+)/'`
PYTHON_DOWNLOAD=https://www.python.org/ftp/python/$PYTHON_LATEST/Python-$PYTHON_LATEST.tgz

This use-case could be improved if we have a latest symlink at https://www.python.org/ftp/python/ always pointing to the latest stable release.

I'm not certain how to implement this, because I'm not aware of how the ftp index is generated, but I have the feeling it shouldn't be so complicated, considering that during the release process, the release managers can select a checkbox to say "this is the latest release".

In my experience this is nothing new, and in some other indexes it's common to find a latest symlink, like this example

Just for the record, I already talked about this with @hugovk and @ewdurbin but I'm opening an issue so the discussion can stay in one place :)