Guillaume Lelarge <guillaume at lelarge.info> writes:
>   * pubDate is hard to get in the good format. As a matter of fact, I
>     have no idea how to get it on the right format.

How about...

PUBDATE=$(tar tfvj ${TARFILE} | head -1 | cut -d " " -f 4-5)
?

And how about
AUTHOR=$(tar tfvj ${TARFILE} | head -1 | cut -d " " -f 2 | cut -d "/" -f 1)
?

Those mayn't be totally optimal, but they're surely better than
nothing.

I'd suggest looking at the names for "rc", and having a little bit of
logic that assortedly reports:

 - "This is a release" if it doesn't say "rc"
 - "This is a mere release candidate" if it does.

I think it's a fine idea for an RSS feed to include release
candidates, particularly if it expressly tells the reader that that's
what they are!

It's all pretty dependent on the combination of:
  a) The format of output from tar.  But that shouldn't be *too* fragile, as 
     a LOT of people depend on its behaviour, including how it outputs things.

  b) The naming conventions for releases.

     But again, that's not *too* fragile - I get hatemail (not too
     hateful :-)) any time the names of tarballs vary from
     expectations.

     Apparently folks with package management systems (e.g. - like
     Debian dpkg, RPM, Ports) have some dependencies on how things are
     spelled.

I'm fine with the direction you seem to be going on this; if you like
my suggestions, feel free to add them in.

And I expect that the right answer for compiling the whole RSS is for
each Makefile to have a rule that essentially says:

   "rummage around in the nearby download directories and generate a
   new central RSS file based on the combination of all of the files."

It's "expensive" in one sense, since each time you run "make" in one
of the download directories, it regenerates the main rss file.  But
since that's just constructed by cat'ing a few files together, it's
not *REALLY* expensive.

We already need to run "make" in one of the download directories
whenever we deploy a new download, to generate checksums.  Getting
that to regenerate RSS at no visible cost is an eminently reasonable
price to pay.
-- 
"cbbrowne","@","ca.afilias.info"
<http://dba2.int.libertyrms.com/>
Christopher Browne
(416) 673-4124 (land)