Issues with KStars data downloads

[Hy Murveit]

I wanted to document some issues I've been having with our data downloads
(the "Data -> Download New Data" menu) in hopes someone has insight in how
to fix it or who to contact to help. This has been an ongoing issue for
several months now, with previous updates to this data.

The issue is that though I've uploaded a new data catalog for the Imaging
Planner (version 2) I, and presumably some of you, but presumably not all
of you) still see Version 1 in the download menu.

Here's a screenshot

[image: Screenshot 2025-03-14 at 10.29.07 PM.png]

Please note in the screenshot that the description says "Catalog 1 for the
KStars ImagingPlanner tool".

Though KStars displays that, when I chase down all the web links using curl
I do get the right data. This is shown below.

As an explanation to the below, here's how things work.

   - We use the KNewStuff3 library to manage all this downloading. It is
   configured as described in the following bullets. I don't know when that
   got implemented, though it's been working for a long time. There are more
   recent versions of that library, but they probably depend on moving to Qt6.
   - We store a kstars.knsrc "KNewStuff file" in data/kstars.knsrc that
   tells KNewStuff where to look for a "providers file",
   - This providers file gives links to "providers download files",
   - and those files show the titles, descriptions, and payload urls for
   the actual data.

All that looks configured fine to me when chasing the urls using curl. See
details below.

Hy

*The kstars.knsrc file says the providers can be found
at https://cdn.kde.org/edu/kstars/providers.xml
<https://cdn.kde.org/edu/kstars/providers.xml>*
> cat ~/Projects/kstars/kstars/data/kstars.knsrc
[KNewStuff3]
ProvidersUrl=https://cdn.kde.org/edu/kstars/providers.xml
TargetDir=kstars
Uncompress=true

*Accessing providers.xml shows one of the two providers
at https://cdn.kde.org/edu/kstars/main.xml
<https://cdn.kde.org/edu/kstars/main.xml>*
> curl -O https://cdn.kde.org/edu/kstars/providers.xml
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time
 Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left
 Speed
100   607  100   607    0     0   3668      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--
 3678
> cat providers.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE knewstuffproviders SYSTEM "knewstuffproviders.dtd">
<knewstuffproviders>
  <provider downloadurl="https://cdn.kde.org/edu/kstars/main.xml"
            nouploadurl="https://edu.kde.org/contrib/"
   icon="http://edu.kde.org/pics/projects/cr32-app-kstars.png">
    <title>KStars Data</title>
  </provider>
  <provider downloadurl="https://cdn.kde.org/edu/kstars/dso.xml"
            nouploadurl="https://edu.kde.org/contrib/"
   icon="http://edu.kde.org/pics/projects/cr32-app-kstars.png">
    <title>KStars Data</title>
  </provider>
</knewstuffproviders>

*That main.xml contains the right "Catalog 2" description and payload url*
> curl -O https://cdn.kde.org/edu/kstars/main.xml
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time
 Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left
 Speed
100  6236  100  6236    0     0  25844      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--
25875
> cat main.xml
<knewstuff>
...
<stuff>
<name>ImagingPlanner Catalog1</name>
<type>ImagingPlanner</type>
<author email="kstars-devel at kde.org">Hy Murveit</author>
<licence>Free noncommercial ShareAlike use with credit. Creative Commons
license. Credit for individual images in .csv files.</licence>
<summary lang="en">Catalog 2 for the KStars ImagingPlanner tool.</summary>
<version>2.0</version>
<release>1</release>
<releasedate>2025-03-12</releasedate>
<downloadsize1>9300</downloadsize1>
<preview lang="en">
https://www.indilib.org/jdownloads/knewstuff/imagingplanner-screenshot.jpg
</preview>
<payload lang="en">
https://cdn.kde.org/edu/kstars/ImagingPlanner-catalog-2.0.tar.gz</payload>
<rating>5</rating>
<downloads>0</downloads>
</stuff>
...
</knewstuff>

*So why does kstars not display the right description? I've tried clearing
the cache in *
*~/.local/share/knewstuff3/*
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