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Metalinks project

The metalinks project is a SourceForge project where developers join to fill some of the gaps in the metalink adoption. Because it contains allot of different programs, you are just going to have to choose the one you like.

People

Current project members: Bram, Anthony, Hampus and Neil. All of these people are experienced metalink developers and are working on multiple metalinks related projects (not all hosted through the metalinks SF project).

Metalinks Introduction

The shortest description of a metalink is probably: an XML mirror list. However, they can contain much more information then just a couple of links. Key parts of a metalink include: a description of the files, verification information and publisher information. This allows the clients to choose the right mirror and verify the data after downloading it.

This does however, mean that the information needs to be collected and put into the Metalink XML format.

This project focuses on creating tools to help people in handling and creating Metalinks according to the Metalinks standard.

As most open source projects, we need community response to help us in finding bugs and thinking of features. Please consider posting these. If you are a developer and would like to add applications to the project, please contact us through sourceforge.

Projects

Currently, the metalinks project is host to the following tools:

metalink
Metalink is the main Metalink generation tool. It combines a list of mirrors (from stdin) and a number of files into one Metalink record (stdout). It can also be used to transform a MD5SUMS file into a metalink.
Metalink editor
A cross-platform GUI editor, written in Python. It enables you to both create and edit metalinks in a user friendly fashion. The editor can automatically enter info about file name, file size, hashes & chunk checksums by scanning a local file.
Metalink Checker
metalink.py

A Python script to check metalink files and complete a basic download.

sfmetalink
sfmetalink is a small PHP script, which is allows any SF project to host metalinks for their files. It also formes a good example for people who are using static mirror lists.
Metamirrors Firefox plugin (still up for revision at firefox.com)
1.2: SVN

I have developed a plugin for Metamirrors, which will allow you to right-click on links and transform them into metalinks. It can be done by first reporting a hashfile (like an MD5SUMS) to Metamirrors and then requesting the metalink for the download url.

Metamirrors will then generate a Metalink with the hash information from the hashfile (and automatically add other mirrors for that file). If you have a Metamirrors account, don't forget to set your username in the preferences.

Misc
Consider it as anything else you might be able to use. Developers should take always take a look here.

Getting the edge of it all

To get the newest version of everything, check the dependencies and run:

svn co https://metalinks.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/metalinks metalinks

With the hosting help of

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