Bug 317910

Description David Williams 2010-06-25 00:20:21 EDT

in our download pages, for distributions of prerequisite software (e.g. platform, emf, gef, etc.) we check if that distribution still exists. We (usually) still have it cached, if it does not exist, but if it does not exist, we just display the name, not a link to download it. We do this because otherwise (previously) many users (committers) would get "404" errors trying to get a prereq build that had been removed. This mostly an issue for I-builds ... since for releases, and milestones, we normally do refer to other releases or milestones in our download page. 

Ok, problem .. during the helios release, the code that checks if these resources exist for some reason started taking forever to complete, and our page would not display .. get some "server internal error" sort of page. 

The quick fix (which is actually pretty cool thing to do anyway, was to use php on command line and capture the output as an html file 

php index.php 1>index.html 2>errors.txt  

What's nice is that both the index.html and index.php files can be left right where they are, and the index.html will be favored by server (the way ours are setup, anyway). 

Most of the data in the page never has to be regenerated ... except for may be those prequess that might have lost. So, pretty nice, Very nice, quick lively HTMl file and if the PHP ever did change ... just run the conversion again,  

Alternatives: 
1. use php2html occasionally, specially before big releases.   
2. use it as a cron jbo to do every day, or so,. 
3. Just don't worry about it, let  'en get 404
4. Improve the whole build/deliver styem. (e.g. have it delivered to you desk will our are at lunch. :)
5 Be smarter about when used. e.g. use during I build, but not for S builds and R build ... where presumably they would still be easy to get. 

6. There be better ways that the way I'm doing it ... currenntly users some URL Connections ... so it ca work from local machine as well as shile on build.org