GitHub Downloads and the github portgroup

[Alex Afanasyev]

On Mar 28, 2013, at 2:03 PM, Ryan Schmidt <ryandesign at macports.org> wrote:

> 
> On Mar 28, 2013, at 11:36, Ben Smith wrote:
> 
>> As someone who has used the github portgroup in the past, I'm wondering if there is an agreed upon new download area for github projects (since Github depreciated downloads). For instance, should we all have a folder under tree/master where we place the tar.gz files?  
>> 
>> I want to make sure I'm doing the "standard" thing to make sure everyone is happy with the portfiles as I start updating them.
> 
> When all you need is the source code exactly as it is published in git, download from a git tag. If there are no tags, encourage the developer to create a tag for the latest stable version, then use that. If the developer will not create tags, you can list any git committish.
> 
> For projects that had separate downloads that they placed in the now-deprecated github downloads area, I believe those projects are now expected to place those kinds of downloads elsewhere, in their own web space, so each project will be different. Hopefully, each project has a web site where there is a download link which will show you where you should be downloading from.

For the downloads that are not necessarily related to the source (e.g., compiled versions of the code or something similar), it is possible to use a separate (detached histories) "downloads" branch (here is a history graph of an example: https://github.com/named-data/ndn-js/network).  It is not the cleanest solution, but could be useful if there are no other places to put files.

--
Alex