Accessing the latest version x.y.z releases by x.y or x

[reezer]

Various CDNs (Google's for example) allow access of the latest bug fix release of a certain series by not specifying the minor version number. This makes sense, because such releases usually don't contain anything that can breakage, but only contain bug, performance or stability fixes (maybe better support for certain browsers).

To give an example. The current:

http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.0/jquery-1.8.0.min.js

should also be available as:

http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8/jquery-1.8.min.js

and once 1.8.1 is released link to:

http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.1/jquery-1.8.1.min.js

For comparison see:

https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.2/jquery.min.js
https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7/jquery.min.js
https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js

(Maybe it would be better to mention this in its own ticket, but specifying the version number twice seems unnecessary.)

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[ryankirkman]

So there's a few issues with implementing this:

• It assumes everyone follows semantic versioning in the same manner
• Depending on the Cache-Control max-age you might not actually get bug fixes for a long time (e.g. 1 year)
• I'm not sure how we would implement this from a technical sense
  • Right now everything is just static file serving. Introducing somewhat dynamic script serving will complicate things

In regards to including the version number in the file name, my policy is to include the file exactly as it is provided by the library maintainer, filename and all, e.g. http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.8.0.min.js

[reezer]

• Well, one should of course know the library one uses. It's also not like one would have to include such a version. (and a lot of different libraries for sanity reasons follow this or similar semantics)
• Isn't that what ETags are for?
• Would symlinks be an option? That way they'd implemented just like most libraries in Unix systems, which do exactly what I propose here. But I don't know if and how git supports links.

[blaise-io]

I’d also appreciate this, in my case for jQuery as well. It would be great to automatically benefit from bug fix releases (third digit) without having to monitor bug fix releases and updating paths every time.

I understand this may be complicated because it needs adjustments to the existing architecture, but I think it would make a great additional to the service.

[thomasdavis]

This is most likely out of our scope for now, we are trying to keep management overheads down.

Though will keep the ticket alive if anyone has any good ideas. Symlinks sounds like the way to go but I'm not sure I want to be managing hundreds of symlinks etc

[thomasdavis]

Thanks @hpatoio

[thomasdavis]

#612

[fidian]

In #1495 I offered to make a shell script that would manage the multitude of shell scripts and it could be added as part of your build process. @ryankirkman had a concern that any sort of complexity might not work. Have symlinks even been tried? If not, I'd be happy to give a pull request that would add symlinks for a single project to save on clutter. It appears that the CDN might just proxy the first request through to another host, so I suppose it's more important to see if the original host supports symlinks.

[altmind]

👍 It will be a cool and needed feature.

[petecooper]

Tagging in #987

[AliMD]

👍 nice idea ;)
whats your schedule for do it ?

[vakata]

If not wild card support, how about using "latest", especially for libs that use the npm hook - in npm there always is a latest tag. That could even promote moving to verified sources (npm) for the libs, and reduce manual submissions.

[luigimannoni]

Completely agree with that, i guess having a /latest/.js and /latest/.min.js would be easier to maintain rather than using wildcards

[AliMD]

Do you forgot this feature/issue ?!

[eusonlito]

👍

[dandv]

I'd really like for latest or last to work. Useful also in examples of how to use libraries.

[Kristinita]

+1

[dhowe]

+1

[temandroid]

+1

[MattIPv4]

Closing, there is no feasible way to implement this whilst we have a focus on asset integrity with SRI.