Bug #1753888 “Package Source Repository links are broken, should...” : Bugs : pkg-website

Package Source Repository links are broken, should point to Salsa

Bug #1753888 reported by Nick Wagener
10
This bug affects 2 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
pkg-website
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

PAGE: https://packages.ubuntu.com/source/xenial/sim4

HAS 2 BAD LINKS:
svn://anonscm.debian.org/debian-med/trunk/packages/sim4/trunk/ (address not understood)

Debian Package Source Repository (Browsable)
    http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-med/trunk/packages/sim4/trunk/ (404)

Revision history for this message
Rhonda D'Vine (rhonda) wrote :

svn:// would need a special handler, and the later is invalid because the source code got moved. Unfortunately old packages won't get updated with those information, the development versions will eventually fade out those information

Changed in pkg-website:
status: New → Invalid
summary: - bad links
+ Package Source Repository links are broken, should point to Salsa
Changed in pkg-website:
status: Invalid → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Peter J. Mello (roguescholar) wrote :

This bug was incorrectly marked as invalid, as Debian Salsa left beta status in January 2018 and since then has been the primary Cloud DVCS system used by Debian Developers and Teams to maintain packages in the archive. The values for these two fields have perfect positive correlation with two keys found in the Source stanza of every Debian package's control file (Vcs-{Git,Svn,Hg,Cvs} and Vcs-Browse), and that should ultimately be the source of these link targets.

I was just at https://packages.ubuntu.com/source/bionic/glirc and there's obviously an inefficiency at work here. It appears these links are sourced not from the most recent package release in any distribution but only the latest release for the distribution being shown. This is one instance where versioned information is a hindrance to the consumer and not a benefit, as packaging repositories are always subject to change at the whim of the maintainer and over the course of the five-year support cycle for LTS releases will lead to a bevy of dead links that frustrate anyone attempting to examine the files used to build the package in question.

The Debian Tracker site (https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/glirc) is a good example of how to handle this, as it similarly provides much versioned information for packages across several distributions, but only provides a single set of link targets to the packaging repositories, sourced from the most recent distribution to minimize the potential for outdated information and thus, dead links.

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