[smartmontools-support] SVN - branches/RELEASE_7_1_DRIVEDB missing

[Christian Franke]

Michał Sochoń wrote:
> Hey,
> I was configuring auto-fetching of the drivedb.h file on system
> install based on smartctl version,
> by simple awking smartctl --version output to set variable
> smartctl_version, which ended as 7.1 on ubuntu focal 20.04.
> I decided to use that var as a fragment of the URL to fetch the latest
> drivedb.h file from SVN.
>
> I discovered that my scripts are failing because the branch
> 'branches/RELEASE_7_1_DRIVEDB' is missing in SVN.
> A quick look at the
> https://www.smartmontools.org/browser/trunk/smartmontools/drivedb.h
> and the  'Visit' drop-down menu shows a lot of other versions, except
> 7.1.
>
> Some questions:
> - is the missing branch for 7.1 done on purpose, or could it be added
> by the maintainers?

The drivedb.h files from branches 5.41-5.42, 6.1-6.3, 6.5-6.6 are identical.

Starting with 7.0, a new branch is only created if it would differ from 
previous branch. Creation is done close to next release to ensure that 
database updates do not fail when done from CI builds.

The version number used for the branch is set in configure.ac:
https://www.smartmontools.org/changeset/4596
...
https://www.smartmontools.org/changeset/5152
https://www.smartmontools.org/changeset/5153

The branch name is patched into the update script:

$ sed -n  's,^[^ ]*="\(RELEASE_[0-9_]*_DRIVEDB\)".*$,\1,p' \
   /usr/sbin/update-smart-drivedb
RELEASE_7_2_DRIVEDB


> - should I switch to tags (and probably deal with some non-moving refs
> if the tags are not updated)?
> - is it better to actually add extra logic to the code to handle such
> situations? (for example if version is 7.1 then fall back to 7.0)

Use the update_smart_drivedb script. It also verifies the signature of 
the file.

Thanks,
Christian