(possible) removal of directory listing broke how Debian checks for new upstream release

[ewdurbin]

Originally reported by: sandrotosi (Bitbucket: sandrotosi, GitHub: sandrotosi)

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Hello,
It seems like PyPI disable its directory listing on URLs like https://pypi.python.org/packages/source/n/numpy/ (while previously you were able to look at the dir contents: http://web.archive.org/web/20091124123725/http://pypi.python.org/packages/source/n/numpy/ )

This was used by a huge amount of packages in Debian to check for new upstream releases. It is possible to re-enable it?

Regards,
Sandro

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• Bitbucket: https://bitbucket.org/pypa/pypi/issue/228

[ewdurbin]

Original comment by Richard Jones (Bitbucket: r1chardj0n3s, GitHub: r1chardj0n3s):

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That's unfortunate, and certainly wasn't ever anything we explicitly supported (there are other, supported mechanisms for checking for upstream releases). I'm not sure those listings are going to be made available in the future either, as we move away from a file system backend.

@dstufft might be able to comment here.

[ewdurbin]

Original comment by Donald Stufft (Bitbucket: dstufft, GitHub: dstufft):

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This went away as I prepared to move us away from storing the files on a local file system and instead move to an object store like S3 or Cloud Files. I'm planning to add it back temporarily while we're still on the local file system but it's going to go away in the future either way when we move to being backed by the object store because the API calls we need to make it work are expensive API calls. I believe that someone from #debian-python on OFTC is planning on adding a lintian check to warn people that their packages are using the unsupported URL instead of the supported one which would be https://pypi.python.org/simple/numpy/ in this case.

[ewdurbin]

Original comment by sandrotosi (Bitbucket: sandrotosi, GitHub: sandrotosi):

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Thanks a lot for the quick answer (and the explanation of what happened) :)

[ewdurbin]

Original comment by Barry Warsaw (Bitbucket: warsaw, GitHub: warsaw):

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This is still painful I think. We have tons of packages for which the debian/watch file will have to be fixed. Ok, I can kind of live with that, but the urls on https://pypi.python.org/simple/foo/foo-x.y.tar.gz all end with #md5=blah. I think that makes it rather difficult to come up with a simple pattern to find the download url. I'm trying to figure out the magic debian/watch incarnation to make this work. :(

[ewdurbin]

Original comment by Barry Warsaw (Bitbucket: warsaw, GitHub: warsaw):

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This describes how unfortunate the simple urls are:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=776267#10

[ewdurbin]

Original comment by sandrotosi (Bitbucket: sandrotosi, GitHub: sandrotosi):

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this is a working debian/watch file using simple: http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/python-modules/packages/astroid/trunk/debian/watch?view=markup

[ewdurbin]

Original comment by Barry Warsaw (Bitbucket: warsaw, GitHub: warsaw):

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See also pypi/warehouse#358