Improving the JSON cache created by ftp-admin install

[David King <amigadave amigadave com>]

(Please CC me when replying, as I am not subscribed to this list)

Last weekend, I decided to change the Perl script that is used to update 
the Cheese website:

http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnomeweb-wml/tree/projects.gnome.org/cheese/update.pl

Briefly, the script connects to the GNOME FTP server, queries the 
modification times (in effect, the release dates) of Cheese tarballs and 
updates the website with download links, checksums and links to 
announcement emails in the gnome-announce-list archives.

I discovered that a JSON cache of some useful metadata exists:

http://download.gnome.org/sources/cheese/cache.json

I changed the update script to use this metadata, and it simplified the 
process significantly. However, there are some relatively simple 
improvements that I would like to make to the cache.

Currently, the data is relatively unstructured, consisting of an array 
of one integer and three objects, with the objects all having the same 
name (the project name, in this case ‘cheese’). One object contains a 
list of versions, while the other contains the latest release for each 
major/minor series, and the other object contains detailed metadata 
about each version. Also, while a link to the checksum files is provided 
for each release, the checksums are not, which means that the script 
must fetch the checksum files and parse the checksum for a tarball out 
of each one. Finally, the release date is not included in the release 
metadata either, meaning another query to the FTP server to determine 
the modification time of each tarball.

I propose a more structured format, something similar to the following:

// Implied project name here.
{
  "releaseSeries" :
  [
    {
      "seriesVersion" : "3.2"
      "releases" :
      [
        {
          "releaseVersion" : "3.2.0",
          "releaseDate" : "2011-04-01 12:34",
          "tarballs" :
          [
            "tar.gz" :
            {
              "basename" : "cheese-3.2.0.tar.gz",
              "md5sum" : "abcdef",
              "sha256sum" : "123456abcdef"
            },
            "tar.bz2" :
            {
              // etc.
            }
          ],
          "sha256sumFile" : "cheese-3.2.0.sha256sum",
          "md5sumFile" : "cheese-3.2.0.md5sum",
          "newsFile" : "cheese-3.2.0.news",
          "changesFile" : "cheese-3.2.0.changes";
          "latestFile" : "LATEST-IS-3.0.2";
        },
        {
          "releaseVersion" : "3.2.1",
          // etc.
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "seriesVersion" : "3.3",
      // etc.
    },
  ]
}

I am happy to implement the changes in the ftp-admin script:

http://git.gnome.org/browse/sysadmin-bin/tree/ftpadmin

and welcome any comments, especially from anyone who uses the current 
data, or who might otherwise find more detailed metadata useful. This is 
my first experience with Perl and JSON, so please go easy on the newbie!

--
http://amigadave.com/