GitHub: size of remote file is not known

[Chris]

On 2021-01-05 03:49, Mathieu Arnold wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 04, 2021 at 08:04:32PM -0800, Chris wrote:
>> I don't use Github. So I'm not familiar with their service(s).
>> But ports using source fetched from them always return:
>> size of remote file is not known
>> Is it that their servers simply refuse to return size/content-length
>> or is this something else?
>> I can see where this might turn into a problem for those attempting
>> to build ports on a system with limited resources -- especially
>> during a meta-port build, and even more so for newcomers.
>> 
>> Is anyone familiar with why this is so? I'd like to change this.
> 
> USE_GITHUB is using a GitHub (and a git) feature to have git-archive(1)
> files generated and served on the fly.
Feature? ;-)
> So, the server has no idea how
> small or large the file will be, as it does not exist yet, so it cannot
> report the size to the http client.
> 
> Once one is generated it gets cached for a while, so if the file has
> been requested not too far back, the server will have it cached and will
> know the size, but it only happens for files that are requested
> frequently.
Ahh. Then it looks grim for making any changes in that regard.
Thank you very much for the insight, Mathieu.

--Chris