More secure and robust downloads

Posted on: 2020-03-04 15:43:06+00:00

Infra member Daniel Gruno writes:

To better provide our millions of users with downloads, the Apache Infrastructure Team has been restructuring the way downloads work for our main distribution channels over the past few weeks. For users, this will largely go unnoticed, and for projects likely the same; but we did want to mention the changes we've made:

As of March, 2020, we are deprecating www.apache.org/dist/ in favor of https://downloads.apache.org/ for backup downloads as well as signature and checksum verification. The primary driver has been splitting up web site visits and downloads to gain better control and offer a better service for both downloads and web site visits.

This does not impact end-users, and should have a minimal impact on projects, as our download selectors as well as visits to www.apache.org/dist/ have been adjusted to make use of downloads.apache.org instead. We are asking that projects, in their own time-frame, change references on their own web sites from www.apache.org/dist/ to downloads.apache.org wherever such references may exist, to complete the switch in full. We will not be turning off www.apache.org/dist/ in the near future, but would greatly appreciate if projects could help us transition away from the old URLs in their documentation and on their download pages.

The standard way of uploading releases will still apply, however there may be a short delay (<= 15 minutes) for technical reasons between the release and when releases show up on downloads.apache.org.

If you have any questions about this change, please do not hesitate to reach out to us at users@infra.apache.org.

With regards,

Daniel on behalf of ASF Infrastructure