livecheck

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jul 23, 2009, at 14:43, Scott Haneda wrote:

> Hello, I worked on the memtest port a while back.  I was talking  
> with the author the other day and after he saw the port, he notices  
> the livecheck option.
>
> His concern was that of course, it downloads the entire page, and  
> uses regex to parse out the important bits.  He was willing to  
> create a current-version.txt file that he maintains, as he was  
> worried about bandwidth.
>
> I see this as a semi valid concern.  But I also do not see it as a  
> lot different than a user going to a Web site and manually checking  
> the version in a browser.
>
> What are fellow port developers opinions on this matter?  I am not  
> aware of any scheduled and routine hits that live check is going to  
> make, it is a on user demand feature.
>
> If I have this incorrect, please let me know, as I do feel it is  
> important to play nice to the developers of software for which  
> ports are made.

True, livecheck will only be used when a user types "port livecheck".  
Most often this would only be the port maintainer. For example I run  
livecheck on the ports I maintain to see if I have to update any of  
them.

I try to write my livechecks to use the smallest web page available  
that will answer the question. I wish more developers provided a  
current-version.txt or something like that. It sure would save on  
bandwidth and make things faster.