For each mirror at present there exists the current folder structure to get to a stage 'releases/<arch>/current-stage<stage-no>/stage<stage-no>-<arch>-<date-of-build>.tar.bz2'. Whilst most of the variable data can remain intact, the date-of-build makes automation impossible without probing. In a similar manner to the portage snapshots folder using a pointer from portage-latest.tar.bz2 to the latest revision of the portage tarball, the path leading to the stage autobuild tarball should contain a pointer to it, allowing for automation. The new proposed path could be 'releases/<arch>/current-stage<stage-no>/ stage<stage-no>-<arch>-current.tar.bz2'. The word latest could be used instead of current for consistency with portage-latest.tar.bz2. As an example, one could use the distfiles.gentoo.org mirror to download a stage 3 autobuild tarball for amd64 by specifying the path 'http://distfiles.gentoo.org/releases/amd64/current-stage3/stage3-amd64-current.tar.bz2'. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: This is more of a feature request, so repeatable steps has been omitted. Actual Results: Already covered. Expected Results: Already covered.
The design intent was for anybody doing automation to fetch the .txt file first, and use that to find the correct file. This is explicitly done so that all files have a dated filename after being downloaded. If there was a way to tell mirrors to redirect on symlink existence, I would love to do that, but there isn't.
*** Bug 370247 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
