Metalink News : 03 Dec 2008

[Ant Bryan]

Fedora 10 released with Metalinks provided by Fedora's
MirrorManager
openSUSE's MirrorBrain Metalinks signatures and torrents!
libmetalink (C) and PylibMetalink released!
scene.org offers Metalinks for demoscene downloads
A call for translators and packagers
Feature bounties for Firefox, curl, wget, Google Chrome, and
others.
aria2 1.0.1 (CLI) released!
Metalink tools and Retriever new versions
Metalink Mailing list is now carried on gmane.org
Podcasts: Shawn Wilsher (Firefox), Anne van Kesteren (Opera)

...
Fedora 10 released with Metalinks provided by Fedora's
MirrorManager

Matt Domsch, who handles Fedora's MirrorManager, writes:

"As of tonight, metalinks are available for all Fedora CD and DVD
ISOs. Metalinks provide a list of servers which have the same
content, as well as checksum information to validate the download is
correct. Tools such as aria2 can be used to retrieve content pointed
to by a metalink.

For example, to get the Fedora 10 i686 LiveCD:

$ sudo yum install aria2
$ wget -O metalink.xml \
http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/metalink?path=pub/fedora/linux/releases/10/Live/i686/F10-i686-Live.iso
$ aria2c -M metalink.xml

I’ll work with the websites team to get single-click metalinks added
to the get-fedora pages."

You can also use any other Metalink client, of course.

http://domsch.com/wordpress/?p=7
...
openSUSE's MirrorBrain Metalinks signatures and torrents!

Peter Poeml, MirrorBrain author, posts:

Metalinks can now automatically include PGP signatures. When a file
named "filename.asc" is found, its content is embedded into the the
metalink.

The command line metalink client aria2 automatically downloads the the
PGP signature file, so it can be verified locally. Note that aria2
doesn't verify the signature itself.

MirrorBrain is the first metalink generator that automates this.
Hopefully, this makes way to more usage of this very interesting
feature of metalinks.

This feature is already used by openSUSE. does, since 11.1 Beta3, sign
their ISO images individually. Here is an example:
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.1-Beta3/iso/openSUSE-11.1-Beta3-Addon-Lang-i386.iso.metalink

Thus, openSUSE is the second project, after curl, to include PGP
signatures into metalinks.

Generated metalinks can automatically include links to Bittorrent
resources.

So how can you use the new feature? The command line metalink client
aria2 can automatically use P2P resources and HTTP resources from
metalinks at the same time.

http://mirrorbrain.org/news_items/metalinks_now_with_PGP_signatures
http://mirrorbrain.org/news_items/metalinks_now_with_torrents
...
libmetalink (C) and PylibMetalink released!

libmetalink is a Metalink library written in C language. It provides
programs written in C to add Metalink functionality such as parsing
Metalink XML files.
PylibMetalink are (unsurprisingly) Python bindings for the libmetalink
library.

https://launchpad.net/libmetalink
https://launchpad.net/pylibmetalink
...
scene.org offers Metalinks for demoscene downloads

You can now download demoscene files with Metalinks from scene.org!

http://www.scene.org/
...
A call for translators and packagers

You don't need to be a developer to help out in open source.
Metalink programs need to be translated into all sorts of languages so
people can use them in their native tongue.
For instance, aria2 has been partially translated into nearly 30
languages. Some of these are incomplete and could use your help!
Also, we need binary packagers for Linux distributions, so more people
can use the software.
Thanks to everyone who already helps out with this!

https://translations.launchpad.net/aria2/trunk/+pots/aria2c
...
Feature bounties for Firefox, curl, wget, Google Chrome, and
others.

Got too much time on your hands?

Why not add Metalink support to one of the many programs waiting for
it?

We have feature bounties so you can earn some extra cash working on
Firefox, curl, wget, Google Chrome, DownThemAll!, and other programs.

http://groups.google.com/group/metalink-discussion/web/gsoc08-ideas
...
aria2 1.0.1 (CLI) released!

aria2 has passed the 1.0.1 milestone. This mature command line app is
one of the best feature rich Metalink downloaders.

http://aria2.sourceforge.net/
...
Metalink tools and Retriever new versions

Metalink tools, for generating Metalinks, and Retriever, a cross
platform GUI downloader, have been updated too!

http://metalinks.sourceforge.net/
http://www.halogenware.com/software/retriever.html
...
Metalink Mailing list is now carried on gmane.org

Another place to partake in the Metalink discussion.

http://groups.google.com/group/metalink-discussion
http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.metalink.devel
...
Podcasts: Shawn Wilsher (Firefox), Anne van Kesteren (Opera)

We need new topic & guest ideas for podcasts. Got any?

Anne van Kesteren of Opera talks about open standards.
Shawn Wilsher from Mozilla opens up about Firefox & getting involved
in open source projects.

http://knowledgecaps.com/2008/09/19/fos-fresh-online-servicesopera/
http://knowledgecaps.com/2008/10/05/fos-fresh-online-servicesfirefox/