12.6.2 Automated Upload Procedure

Once you have registered your information as described in the previous section, you can and should do ftp uploads for your package. There are two basic kinds of uploads (details in the following sections):

1. Three related files (a “triplet”) to upload a file destined for ftp.gnu.org or alpha.gnu.org: see FTP Upload Release File Triplet.
2. A single (signed) standalone “directive file” to perform operations on the server: see FTP Upload Standalone Directives.

In either case, you upload the file(s) via anonymous ftp to the host ftp-upload.gnu.org. If the upload is destined for ftp.gnu.org, place the file(s) in the directory /incoming/ftp. If the upload is destined for alpha.gnu.org, place the file(s) in the directory /incoming/alpha.

Uploads are processed every five minutes. Uploads that are in progress while the upload processing script is running are handled properly, so do not worry about the timing of your upload. Spurious and stale uploaded files are deleted automatically after 24 hours.

Your designated upload email addresses (see Automated Upload Registration) are sent a message if there are problems processing an upload for your package. You also receive a message when an upload has been successfully processed.

One programmatic way to create and transfer the necessary files is to use the gnupload script, which is available from the build-aux/ directory of the gnulib project at https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/gnulib. Run gnupload --help for a description and examples. (With gnupload, you specify a destination such as ‘ftp.gnu.org:’pkgname rather than using the ‘ftp-upload’ hostname.)

gnupload invokes the program ncftpput to do the actual transfers; if you don’t happen to have the ncftp package installed, the ncftpput-ftp script in the build-aux/ directory of gnulib can serve as a replacement. It uses the plain command line ftp program.

If you have difficulties with an upload, email ftp-upload@gnu.org. You can check the archive of uploads processed at https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/ftp-upload-report.