Re: [Mingw-users] wget binary

[Keith M. <kei...@us...>]

On Monday 27 October 2008 15:09:26 Earnie Boyd wrote:
> Quoting Steve Chapel <ste...@a2...>:
> > I downloaded the wget utility from the MinGW download site and
> > unzipped it into my MinGW folder. I expected a wget binary, but
> > could not find one. Is the wget utility source only? If so, I
> > would suggest one of the following courses of action:
> >
> > 1)      Provide a binary build of wget in addition to the source
> >
> > 2)      Label the filename with "src" to indicate it is source
> > only
>
> Yes, this is an error.  The source packages we distribute should
> always contain a -src string in the name.  The binary packages do
> not contain an identifier.

Existing packages without a qualifier should be binaries, but as 
you've noted, this one is erroneously packaged as source; I guess it 
is actually the source for the binary which can be found in the 
mingwPORT package:
https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2435&package_id=233332
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/mingw/wget-1.9.1-mingwPORT.tar.bz2

(we had to put the source somewhere, to meet our GPL obligations, but 
the tarball seems to have been incorrectly named, and it would have 
been a good idea to add a release note referring to the mingwPORT, 
for the location of the binary).

Digressing from the particular topic of `wget', but following on the 
theme of package naming conventions, new packages, appearing from now 
on, should be named with a `-bin' qualifier, (as tentatively agreed 
among the developers), e.g.:

  foo-1.2.3-mingw32-bin.tar.gz
  foo-1.2.3-mingw32-dev.tar.gz
  foo-1.2.3-mingw32-dll-0.tar.gz
  foo-1.2.3-mingw32-src.tar.gz

(or maybe, if the source is generic, just `foo-1.2.3-src.tar.gz', and 
you may also see the likes of 'foo-1.2.3-mingw32-alpha-dev.tar.gz', 
or `foo-1.2.3-mingw32-beta-dev.tar.gz' for interim releases we'd like 
you to help us to test).

Regards,
Keith.