[csw-maintainers] Mirror update notifications

[Maciej Bliziński]

Hello maintainers,

Do you remember the times when you sent an e-mail to the buildfarm
admins asking to install a package, and the response was that the
package is not yet available for installation?

There has been historically an issue that we never knew when our
released packages hit the mirror[1].  It was a typical scenario when
building a chain of dependencies, that after a package has been
accepted, we had to keep on manually checking the mirror and searching
through the catalog file to find out whether our package is already
available to the world - and the buildfarm.

I've automated this.  I've set up a script, which periodically polls
the mirror over HTTP and sends notifications when there are package
updates.  The two typical cases are packages added and packages
updated.  There are also the cases of package takeovers and deletions.
 In the case of takeovers, both the former and the new package
maintainer get a notification.

As usual, notifier's source code[2] is available for the curious.

When you can expect notifications?  That depends on the times the
catalog is pushed, and cron.  The latter runs four times a day in
regular intervals.

What does notification look like?  The subject line is: "OpenCSW
catalog update report".  The body contains the list of package files
and catalogs that contain them.

Feedback is welcome!

Maciej

[1] http://mirror.opencsw.org/opencsw/
[2] http://sf.net/apps/trac/gar/browser/csw/mgar/gar/v2/lib/python/catalog_notifier.py
    http://sf.net/apps/trac/gar/browser/csw/mgar/gar/v2/lib/python/catalog.py