Special features of the SfR Fresh software archive

The "warix"-processed ("warixified") software archive SfR Fresh allows not only the "pure" download of software packages but offers among other things the great feature to browse and search within the individual members (files) of selected packages in order to study the READMEs and other documentation or to download selected individual files (e.g. images or libraries). This may avoid unnecessary file transfers and installation effort and may let you detect some otherwise undetected software treasures.

You may click "simply" on an archive (package) name itself in order to transfer that archive but the "SfR Fresh" archive offers the following additional special features to you:

And last but not least: The name "Fresh" (original derived from "FReeware SHareware") is also one of our missions so we have developed different control techniques to archive and support always the freshest releases.

INDEX Viewing the archive contents (index)

As an special feature of the SfR Fresh service you may click on the icons placed in front of the archive names of the following type in order to view the contents of that archive.

Remark: This feature uses for performance reasons pre-expanded contents files.

As a new feature (May 2008) you can view a CLOC ("Count Lines of Code") statistics that counts physical lines of source code in many programming languages and in addition comments and blank lines, so you can get quickly an overview about the scale of the project and the used program languages.

A further new feature is the support of Short URLs.

INDEX Browsing selected archive members

As an additional - originally (Dec. 1994) probably world-wide unique - experimental feature of the SfR FRESH server you may click within the displayed archive index on any member in order to browse or download that selected member. The server tries to send an appropriate "Content-type" header field ("mime-type") according to the member's file extension (default: text/html). For example clicking on a GIF file (embedded in an archive file) lets see you the image via your browser or an external viewer without downloading the complete, possibly large archive file.

As a further newer special service some documentation-related files are presented more "user-friendly" respectively "readable" by trying a local pre-formatting (only in standard "automatic"-mode):

Also pure HTML files are forced to be formatted if meaningful but HTML code for e.g. in PHP or Perl code are forced to be displayed as unformatted source code.

Additionally most programming language, markup language and configuration files are shown with line numbering and syntax highlighting.

In order to view the "pure" source code file you may force a simple text transfer ("Content-type: text/plain") for e.g by clicking on the first letter of a member's "file name" within an archive file list.

In order to force a binary transfer ("Content-type: application/octet-stream") you may click on the member's "file size" field instead of the member's "file name".

Remark: This feature uses on-the-fly expansion and displaying the requested member may take some seconds according the archive size. Repeated requests are answered immediately.

UNCOMPRESS Browsing compressed text files

You may click on the icons placed in front of compressed text files of the following type to browse that files forcing on-the-fly expansion.

FILE On-the-fly compression of files before transfer

You may click on one of the optional 
  (Z/gz/zip)
strings after the file description of uncompressed files in order to transfer it as a 
  Z   = "Unix-compressed" 
  gz  = "GNU-zipped"
  zip = "(PK-)zipped"
file in order to save network bandwith.

*** NEW ***Marking of new archive files

Files that are recently inserted in the software archive are marked by two small icons:

*** NEW *** file is not older than 7 days
*new* file is not older than 31 days

[new...] button Archive-insertion-time sorted index

Standardally the archive index is sorted by the archive-insertion-time (not the modified time) in order to get in a clearly arranged matter information about recently archived software.

[abc...] button Alternate alphabetically sorted index

Beside the "standard" archive-insertion-time sorted archive index you may select an alternate alphabetically sorted index.

[search] button Advanced search facility

In order to find a given software package or file you may search recursively starting at the current archive directory. The optional use of different approximative search modes and the optional inclusion of file description texts into the search space may let you find a match even if you don't remember a filename exactly (e.g. "mosaik" instead of "Mosaic") or if you search for a more generic term (e.g. "ftp").

You may specify the

and limit the search for archive members with an archive insertion time not older than a given range.

Searching in the archive internal documentation files outputs not only the found documentation files but also a user specified number of matching lines. Browsing a found documentation file displays at the top of the document the first 10 matching lines with anchors into the file and tries to mark the matches as bolded strings.

The total number of displayed matches may be limited. Consecutive requests for the display of suppressed matches - with optionally different limits - are supported.

Attention: The search-syntax is currently NOT "google"-like, here are some simple examples:

foo bar
would search for a line containg the exact string "foo bar"
foo.*bar
would search for a line containing first "foo" and than "bar" (regular expression)
foo and bar
would search for a line containing "foo" and "bar"
foo or bar
would search for a line containing "foo" or "bar"
The search string must contain at least four "relevant" characters.

Short URLs

As a new feature (May 2008) SfR Fresh supports version and Fresh path independent short URLs in the form of 
  http://www.sfr-fresh.com/package/
For e.g. the URL 
  http://www.sfr-fresh.com/foobar/
may redirect you automatically to 
  http://www.sfr-fresh.com/unix/misc/foobar-x.y.tar.gz/
If the redirect isn't unique SfR Fresh will show you all matches (including the according Fresh pathes) and you can choose yourself the appropriate link!

The string "package" in the short URL may be for e.g. a name like "atool", "gcc", "glpk" or "TrueCrypt".

Archive file descriptions

The archive maintainer can add short descriptions to individual archive files in order to make it easier for the user to evaluate the type and use of a given archive file respectively software package. In a second step the user can take advantage of the special browsing features to study READMEs or other appropriate internal documentation.

The above descripted features are enabled by software written by Jens Schleusener mainly in his spare time - while employed at the Central Division Data Processing of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) which division is now incorporated in the T-Systems Solutions for Research GmbH (SfR). That software consists mainly of two parts:

Use of the SfR Fresh software archive is entirely at your own risk - no warranty is expressed or implied.

You are encouraged to send your comments and suggestions concerning the SfR Fresh software archive ... or look for some annotations from other users!

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