Introduction
The popular Firefox web browser and Thunderbird email client are available in over 40 localisations. However, if it is desired to host these different versions of the programs in the upload directory of a P2P system life becomes difficult as each executable has the same name. This script was written to make life a little easier, as it downloads each localisation in turn, checks the md5sum, then renames the file to reflect the locale and target operating system.
Currently GNU/Linux, Macintosh and Windows are supported, files being renamed
firefox-3.0.1-linux-i686-xx-XX.tar.bz2
Firefox 3.0.1-mac-xx-XX.dmg
Firefox Setup 3.0.1-win32-xx-XX.exe
where xx-XX is the locale of the executable. The script has only been tested under GNU/Linux, but may well operate under other operating systems if the utilities listed are installed.
Licence
The script is made available under
the GNU GPL version
3. 
Releases
In version 20070711 the version of software downloaded is hardcoded in the script, and the locales downloaded are listed in a separate text file (supplied). A separate script is supplied for Firefox and Thunderbird. Md5sums are downloaded by the script.
In version 20080718 there is a common script for Firefox and Thunderbird, and command line arguments are taken for Firefox/Thunderbird version, download speed limit and whether Firefox or Thunderbird is downloaded. Any subsequent command line arguments are passed directly to wget to allow use of the script with proxies, etc. When major versions 3 or higher are downloaded, the script looks for a Linux executable compressed with bzip2 rather than gzip. Invoke the script with no arguments, and it will print a usage help message.
Version 20080722 fixes the md5sum calling bugs when downloading Thunderbird introduced in 20080718. It adds the Macintosh version to the repertoire and allows the versions that are to be downloaded out of GNU/Linux, Macintosh and Windows to be selected on the command line. The locale file is no longer supplied but generated from the md5sum file.
Version 20080723 includes a kludge to deal with the non - standard URL used for the Macintosh version of the ja locale. It adds selective locale download - if a file mylocales.txt is present the locales in that file will be used rather than the ones in the generated locales.txt file. It returns firefoxloadXXXXXXXX where XXXXXXXX is the program version number as the user agent string.
Dependencies
This software requires a recent version of Perl to be installed, along with wget, md5sum, rm and mv. These programs should be already installed on the average GNU/Linux system.
Downloads
firefoxload 20070711
firefoxload 20080718
firefoxload 20080722
firefoxload 20080723
Copyright © 2007-2008 Pete Harlow All Rights Reserved
