For the first time ever, in the context of a mini-project, i've found myself in need of (1) a programmatically-generated download page for use with fossil and (2) unversioned files. Using fossil's own download page as a starting point, i came up with a more basic-case variation which is fully static (doesn't load the file list vi ajax) and is trivial to build directly from a makefile without an intermediary script...

Summary:

• Build a zip file using fossil zip, excluding anything which isn't interesting for end users.
• Build a download.html which includes a link to /uv/the-zip-file.zip, its size, its virtual timestamp (that of the latest checkin), and its SHA3 hash.
• Stuff them both into the unversioned space, explicitly giving them the timestamp of the latest checkin.
• fossil uv sync

The relevant makefile code is:

########################################################################
# Zip file for distribution. This differs from the zip generated via
# the /zip page by removing stuff most users won't need.
dist.zip := dark-venture-card-tools.zip
dist.html := download.html
FDB := .fslckout
.PHONY: $(dist.zip) $(dist.html) $(FDB)
$(FDB):
	@test -f $@ || { echo "Missing fossil checkout db."; exit 1; }
$(dist.zip): $(FDB)
	fossil zip trunk --name dark-venture-card-tools -X "cgi-backend/*,.fossil-settings/*,*.in.css,*Makefile,*.make" $@
SQL_MTIME := select max(mtime) from event where type='ci'
$(dist.html): $(FDB)
	@{ \
	echo "<div class='fossil-doc' data-title='Downloads'>"; \
	echo "<style>#download-list{ line-height: 1.3; font-size: 120%; white-space: pre-wrap; }</style>"; \
	echo "<pre id='download-list'>"; \
	echo "<a href='$(dist.zip)'>$(dist.zip)</a>"; \
	echo "$$(stat --printf=%s $(dist.zip)) bytes"; \
	echo "Last updated (YYYY-MM-DD):" $$(echo "select strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M',($(SQL_MTIME)))" | fossil sql | sed -e "s/'//g") UTC; \
	echo "SHA3-256 hash:" $$(fossil sha3sum $(dist.zip) | cut -d' ' -f1); \
	echo "</pre>"; \
	} > $@
	@echo "Created $@"
dist: $(dist.zip) $(dist.html)
	fossil uv add $(dist.zip) $(dist.html) --mtime $$(echo "$(SQL_MTIME)" | fossil sql)
	fossil uv list
dist-push: dist
	fossil uv sync --verbose

It's currently limited to a single zip file, as that's the extent of my modest needs, but it would be trivial to move into an external script which accepts multiple names or do add a foreach loop directly in the makefile.

The end result looks like:

https://fossil.wanderinghorse.net/r/darkventure/uv/download.html

If /uvlist used a full timestamp, rather than a relative time, i'd have just used that instead, but i'm not a big fan of relative timestamps, in particular for this download, where the name stays constant but the file will be updated from time to time.