[MacPorts] #15395: Use primary port category for fetched distfile layout

[Anders F Björklund]

William Siegrist wrote:

>>> Why would people be browsing the mirrored files? Wouldn't the  
>>> interaction with the site mostly just be 'port' downloading a  
>>> mirrored file?
>>
>> And couldn't you make something like MPWA to browse the files,
>> instead of having to wade through all the lowlevel yourself ?
>>
>> Or, for a low-tech solution, setup some symlink directories.
>> "category/foo -> ../foo", then you can browse category/foo/ ?
>
>
> I definitely hope that MPWA, `port fetch`, and ports.php will make  
> it so that users dont need to browse via Apache indexes, or even  
> know what distfiles.macports.org is. However, right now, I am  
> implementing the low level stuff. If I can also make it useful  
> while we wait on MPWA, then I think it can help some people.
>
> Now, putting aside whether or not people should be browsing apache  
> indexes... I want the layout to use a category directory to make it  
> more manageable on the server for me. I could, and still might,  
> just make it work like I want on the server and leave MP base  
> alone. But I wanted to leverage some of the MP base functionality  
> since some work is already done there for me.  It also seemed like  
> a chance to sync the layout convention used by Portfiles and  
> distfiles so they are the same.

I guess I was just surprised to see another layer of directories  
proposed, after the earlier question on the list why it needed any  
directories at all and not just have all distfiles in one big  
directory... (like BSD)

But as long as there is a migration path and someone willing to do  
the work, then I suppose it's worth the while after all. Kinda like  
the dp2mp transition, it seems like the innocent change could break  
some things.

--anders