Rapid

"Rapid" is a concept for storing "archives" for spring. It consists of multiple indexes:

• index of all known rapid servers: http://repos.springrts.com/repos.gz
• index of all known archives in a repo: http://packages.springrts.com/versions.gz
• index of a single game/map/content archive: .sdp which lists all files inside the "pool" directory

spring can directly read .sdp and the pool directory which contains the real files of an archive. multiple .sdp can share the same files in a pool which makes "rapid" so efficient in storage.

If a Gamedev wants to use it, he needs to use a svn repository for his game where the game archive is in the .sdd format stored:

preparing the svn repository

The svn repository needs to contains a folder which is in the structre of a .sdd. in modinfo.lua version has to be

version = '$VERSION',

$VERSION later on will be replaced by the svn commit number or, when a release is made, the version number of the release.

creating a release

When the SVN repository is connected to rapid, a release can be made by making a svn-commit with a commit message in the format:

VERSION{x.xx}

Where everything in the brackets will replace $VERSION in modinfo.lua.

This will create a tag :stable for this commit and create an archive at http://packages.springrts.com/builds/ which can be distributed/uploaded to different sites if needed. It is also automatically published to upq at http://api.springfiles.com/ which all current download systems have access to; you can validate what happened there, too.

server-side

Serverside RapidTools are used to manage the repository of all games.

usage:

 ./add-archive <file.sdz> </path/to/repo> <tag1 tag2 ...>

filename of the .sdp is:

  md5(md5(filename1) + md5(content of file1) + md5(filename2) + md5(content of file2) ...)

Admin interface made by CarRepairer:

http://packages.springrts.com/

general description

Rapid is used to list all games in the (online-) repositry

as spring supports also reading such a structure, there are some docs in the sourcecode

here is a short description how it works:

take a game archive

atm the archive is a single blob rapid takes all the files in an archive it zips them separately and gives to each zip, as filename, the md5 of the file itself those files belong to the pool folder. games can share files as long as the md5 is the same. A game, is a binary file that is what can be seen in ~/.spring/pool/

~/.spring/packages containts all games with the associated md5s

The filesize is useless, since it assumes same md5 == same file, ie assumes no collision.

Then, there's a repository of games:

ie, a list of available games, and the pool files they need
since now on, i'll refer to a game as the file which is list of md5 that it needs
unless specified otherwise
spring can read those games and pool folder directly
unpacking the files on the fly and reading them like it'd be a monolithic archive
then, there's yet another repository, which contains the list of repositories
if you picture in a tree graph
there's list of repositories on top
then splits to multiple repos
then each repos has multiple games

http://repos.springrts.com/repos.gz is the master

what a rapid downloader needs to do: download the list of repositories for each repository download the list of available games the each repo has also info about latest version of a game then, give a list of available games ( packages in linux package manager terms ), and eventually some meta package that represents the latest version of a game

on download request, download the game descriptor
parse it to get the list of md5
check the available md5 local in the pool folder, and download the missing
upon download of each file, the rapid tool should deflate each archive and verify that the md5 is the same as the file

if not, reject it

if the test is successful, move the md5 files to the pool folder

the game descriptor
belongs to the packages folder instead
with filename == md5 hash
and sdp extension
extra functionality, which is optional:
add possibility to delete games ( since the filenames use md5 hash, it's quite unclear to the user which files he should remove )
and a garbage collector which removes the files from the pool which aren't linked by game

simple reference counting should suffice for garbace collecting

in short

rapid downloads the master file with all repos:

 http://repos.springrts.com/repos.gz

then it downloads from all repos /versions.gz for example here http://packages.caspring.org/versions.gz

ca-1faction:revision:6355,054cf15829e79c357a3be50236e00c4f,Complete Annihilation test-6355,Complete Annihilation 1 faction test-6355 the first section is the name: "ca-1faction:revision:6355"

the package will be downloaded from hash +.sdp so 054cf15829e79c357a3be50236e00c4f.sdp that file belongs to the local packages folder that file contains the list of md5 that the mod requires so you should open it and then check the local pool folder for all the missing files

http://packages.caspring.org/packages/054cf15829e79c357a3be50236e00c4f.sdp this file contains binary md5 + filename of the original file

remember: you must keep the file names untouched as in, everything is indexed by md5

to download the md5 files there's a streamer which will speed up the download

adding your game to the rapid download system

forum thread

To download you can use one of the Rapid_Tags.