Version Numbers in Download File Names

["Matthias Wächter" <matthias.waechter@tttech.com>]

Hi!

Pardon me for requesting more support from pragma-ade prior to ever using the mailing list for general support questions. Maybe I should post this one directly to Hans but others might be interested in this issue as well.

Despite my little but growing knowledge of Context I am currently evaluating its suitability for document building in our company (our workflow is currently Latex-based). A prime aspect of our company's work is to follow well-defined processes, and as part of that, we have to be able to refer to specific versions of applications that are used in the development of our projects. When used, this would apply to Context as well.

Obviously, downloading from pragma-ade gives version numbers only on the entry pages like http://www.pragma-ade.nl/download-1.htm next to the links to the files, but the package files themselves like http://www.pragma-ade.nl/context/current/cont-tmf.zip don't have versioned names (not mentioning that Context and its modules actually _do_ report version numbers as dates upon use).

Is there a strong motivation against having versioned package file names, possibly with some months/years of history? Has this support feature ever been considered by pragma-ade or asked for by their (non-)paying customers? Or is this archive available but I am unable to find it? ;)

Just an example:

Instead of
http://www.pragma-ade.nl/context/current/cont-tmf.zip

use a browseable directory like http://www.pragma-ade.nl/context/archive/ containint files like
http://www.pragma-ade.nl/context/archive/cont-tmf-20060518.zip
http://www.pragma-ade.nl/context/archive/cont-tmf-20060601.zip
http://www.pragma-ade.nl/context/archive/cont-tmf-20060629.zip

and possibly set /context/current/cont-tmf.zip as an internal file system link to the latest file in /context/archive/ for those interested only in the latest version. The proposed method could be applied to all other download files as well.

That way and as long as the archive files are available, a precise version of Context could be fetched from pragma-ade's server without maintaining a local versioned archive of cont.tmf.zip etc. Referral to a specific version of Context would be a lot easier, and documenting the tools used for a project would be a lot simpler. A common understanding of a Context version, reflected in its package file name, would reduce the effort of those responsible for local version control and install package maintenance.

Thanks,
- Matthias