Provide a JSON (?) file with all releases for use by the `gap-actions/setup-gap` GitHub action

[fingolfin]

By @stertooy from this comment

We would need a file containing a list of the releases, with for each release:

• Version number
• URL for a release tarball
• (optional) checksum
• (optional) boolean saying whether this is a pre-release or not
• (optional) boolean saying whether this is the latest release or not

The last two could of course be determined from the version number instead of mentioned explicitly.

---

My comment on this: this file should probably be hosted in the GapWWW repository. We already have scripts to update that repository when a new GAP release is made. That script should be enhanced to insert the data for the new release into that file. And of course we need an initial version of that file with all existing releases -- but a short script should generate that easily (and e.g. AI can help generate that script)

[fingolfin]

A starting point could be obtained via the gh tool, and gh release list --json=name,publishedAt,tagName,isLatest,isPrerelease which gives

[
  {
    "isLatest": true,
    "isPrerelease": false,
    "name": "v4.14.0",
    "publishedAt": "2024-12-05T10:13:04Z",
    "tagName": "v4.14.0"
  },
  {
    "isLatest": false,
    "isPrerelease": true,
    "name": "v4.14.0-beta1",
    "publishedAt": "2024-11-14T17:13:23Z",
    "tagName": "v4.14.0-beta1"
  },
  {
    "isLatest": false,
    "isPrerelease": false,
    "name": "v4.13.1",
    "publishedAt": "2024-06-13T12:38:49Z",
    "tagName": "v4.13.1"
  },
  {
    "isLatest": false,
    "isPrerelease": false,
    "name": "v4.13.0",
    "publishedAt": "2024-03-15T13:37:52Z",
    "tagName": "v4.13.0"
  },
  {
    "isLatest": false,
    "isPrerelease": true,
    "name": "v4.13.0-alpha2",
    "publishedAt": "2024-02-19T13:08:04Z",
    "tagName": "v4.13.0-alpha2"
  },
  {
    "isLatest": false,
    "isPrerelease": true,
    "name": "v4.13.0-alpha1",
    "publishedAt": "2024-02-05T09:08:32Z",
    "tagName": "v4.13.0-alpha1"
  },
  {
    "isLatest": false,
    "isPrerelease": false,
    "name": "v4.12.2",
    "publishedAt": "2022-12-18T02:36:56Z",
    "tagName": "v4.12.2"
  },
  {
    "isLatest": false,
    "isPrerelease": false,
    "name": "v4.12.1",
    "publishedAt": "2022-10-20T20:26:03Z",
    "tagName": "v4.12.1"
  },
  {
    "isLatest": false,
    "isPrerelease": false,
    "name": "v4.12.0",
    "publishedAt": "2022-08-18T21:28:50Z",
    "tagName": "v4.12.0"
  },
  {
    "isLatest": false,
    "isPrerelease": false,
    "name": "v4.11.1",
    "publishedAt": "2021-03-02T16:33:11Z",
    "tagName": "v4.11.1"
  },
  {
    "isLatest": false,
    "isPrerelease": false,
    "name": "",
    "publishedAt": "2020-03-06T11:08:18Z",
    "tagName": "v4.11.0"
  },
  {
    "isLatest": false,
    "isPrerelease": false,
    "name": "v4.10.2",
    "publishedAt": "2019-06-27T11:55:15Z",
    "tagName": "v4.10.2"
  },
  {
    "isLatest": false,
    "isPrerelease": false,
    "name": "",
    "publishedAt": "2019-03-01T11:41:07Z",
    "tagName": "v4.10.1"
  },
  {
    "isLatest": false,
    "isPrerelease": false,
    "name": "",
    "publishedAt": "2019-03-01T11:34:48Z",
    "tagName": "v4.10.0"
  }
]

Not saying we need to use that format, but one could now read this in with another script which then enriches this with download URLs, which always have the form https://github.com/gap-system/gap/releases/download/v4.10.0/gap-4.10.0.tar.gz ; adding .sha256 turns this into the URL of a file containing the SHA256 checksum of that file. The tar.gz URL and that checksum are the only missing pieces in the json, I think

[Joseph-Edwards]

I'm going to work on this now 👍

[fingolfin]

Thanks @Joseph-Edwards ! Just to record something here we discussed: I think it would make sense to move dev/releases/update_website.py out of this repository and to GapWWW, say into the etc dir there (which is already in the exclude list in _config.yml). I think you also need to copy utils.py ; or just copy the error and notice functions in it into update_website.py.

That way it can be edited and improved even after a release was cut.