Ports New Distfiles Checker

This project is run by edwin@FreeBSD.org.

The idea is to check all ports for newer versions of distfiles. For example if the port has the current distname foo-1.2.3, it will check for the availability of foo-1.2.4, foo-1.3.0 and foo-2.0.0.

Just like other checkers, maintainers get informed via email and the output is displayed on a website.

Of course this gives problems with regarding to

Distfiles which increment by more than one (foo-1.2.3 -> foo-1.2.5)
Websites which have their own 404 handler but forget to set the HTTP result to 404 too.
Websites which return the same file for a certain path (gforce powered websites)

The first runs have been done and the output is available on http://edwin.adsl.barnet.com.au/~edwin/ports/

Another great resource is http://portscout.org, run by Martin Wilke (miwi@).