Unable to host mod packs on Github. Possible platform bug/feature request?

[Karunamon]

Greetings all,

 

I've taken to doing most of my modpack work on GIthub as they provide a great way to keep track of changes and issues. Something I noticed the other day is that the mod pack edit page won't allow you to specify a github-hosted zip file.

 

Some background:

 

There are two ways to do this on github, one breaks your mod and one doesn't.

 

The breaking way is to do a git tag when you have your local repository the way you like it, push the tag to github, and then set the platform download link to the "source download" link available on GIthub. The page looks like this:

 

Note the white button and the green button. The white button is a "repo snapshot", the green button is a file I had to manually upload.

 

The white button gets you a download link like this:

--2014-05-26 10:01:11--  https://github.com/cocoacraft/cocoacraft-client/archive/v0.3.zip
Resolving github.com... 192.30.252.129
Connecting to github.com|192.30.252.129|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Found
Location: https://codeload.github.com/cocoacraft/cocoacraft-client/zip/v0.3 [following]
--2014-05-26 10:01:11--  https://codeload.github.com/cocoacraft/cocoacraft-client/zip/v0.3
Resolving codeload.github.com... 192.30.252.144
Connecting to codeload.github.com|192.30.252.144|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: unspecified [application/zip]

The problem here is that the root of the zip file you get this way is a folder with the name of your repo and the version in it. Then, when your users download it, they get a folder structure that looks like ../technic/modpacks/cocoacraft/cocoacraft-v0.3/mods/somerandom.jar

 

..which obviously doesn't work

 

 

The non-broken way is to upload the zip file yourself to a release tag. That gets you a green button, which gets you a zip file link that looks like this:

--2014-05-26 10:05:18--  https://github.com/cocoacraft/cocoacraft-client/releases/download/v0.3/cocoacraft-0.3.zip
Resolving github.com... 192.30.252.128
Connecting to github.com|192.30.252.128|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Found
Location: https://s3.amazonaws.com/github-cloud/releases/20142699/359bfada-e3b8-11e3-858a-6165bafc9f12.zip?response-content-disposition=attachment%3B%20filename%3Dcocoacraft-0.3.zip&AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAISTNZFOVBIJMK3TQ&Expires=1401120381&Signature=bfUkwdswskamAOOQiyPQm3NWEA4%3D [following]
--2014-05-26 10:05:18--  https://s3.amazonaws.com/github-cloud/releases/20142699/359bfada-e3b8-11e3-858a-6165bafc9f12.zip?response-content-disposition=attachment%3B%20filename%3Dcocoacraft-0.3.zip&AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAISTNZFOVBIJMK3TQ&Expires=1401120381&Signature=bfUkwdswskamAOOQiyPQm3NWEA4%3D
Resolving s3.amazonaws.com... 205.251.242.153
Connecting to s3.amazonaws.com|205.251.242.153|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 67055337 (64M) [application/octet-stream]

..A redirect to Amazon S3.

 

Problem is, you try to use the URL from the green button, and the platform won't allow you to enter that in as the download location for your modpack. Says to enter a valid zip location.

 

I think I can see the problem by looking at the output, here. The snapshot correctly sets the MIME type for the download as [application/zip], while the raw file sets it as [application/octet-stream].

 

I guess what I'm asking is, would any of the platform developer folks be able to offer a workaround for this (aside from, yknow, hosting elsewhere ), or allow Github download URLs to be accepted despite the broken MIME type?

 

Thanks!

[plowmanplow]

This is an edge case which is likely not time/cost effective to implement. Just use one of the other publicly available hosting services (I like copy.com).