[Hackage] #622: wrong HTTP Content-Type for tar.gz files, breaking cabal-install behind some proxies.

[Hackage]

#622: wrong HTTP Content-Type for tar.gz files, breaking cabal-install behind
some proxies.
--------------------------------+-------------------------------------------
  Reporter:  guest              |        Owner:         
      Type:  defect             |       Status:  new    
  Priority:  normal             |    Milestone:         
 Component:  hackageDB website  |      Version:  1.6.0.1
  Severity:  normal             |     Keywords:         
Difficulty:  unknown            |   Ghcversion:         
  Platform:                     |  
--------------------------------+-------------------------------------------
 As can be seen here,
 {{{
 > HEAD http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/00-index.tar.gz
 ...
 Content-Encoding: x-gzip
 Content-Length: 1398234
 Content-Type: application/x-tar
 ...
 }}}
 the file is declared as a tar file with a {{{gzip}}} content encoding.

 This breaks with at least on virus scanning proxy, namely !AvkHttp (of
 !InternetSecurity by G DATA):
 {{{
 > cabal update -v3
 Downloading the latest package list from hackage.haskell.org
 Sending:
 GET /packages/archive/00-index.tar.gz HTTP/1.1
 Host: hackage.haskell.org
 User-Agent: cabal-install/0.8.0
 Creating new connection to hackage.haskell.org
 Received:
 HTTP/1.1 200 OK
 AvkHttp: timeout-protection
 ...
 AvkHttp: timeout-protection
 Date: Sun, 03 Jan 2010 09:52:53 GMT
 Server: Apache/2.2.3 (Debian)
 Last-Modified: Sun, 03 Jan 2010 09:38:56 GMT
 ETag: "388d94-1555da-5fa0cc00"
 Accept-Ranges: bytes
 Content-Length: 17571840
 Content-Type: application/x-tar
 Downloaded to
 /home/nils/.cabal/packages/hackage.haskell.org/00-index.tar.gz
 cabal: Codec.Compression.Zlib: incorrect header check
 }}}

 As you can see, the proxy unpacked the data, breaking cabal-install.

 https://bugs.launchpad.net/malone/+bug/173096 describes a similar problem,
 and has some discussion about why using {{{Content-Encoding}}} in this way
 is useful in some cases but hurtful in others.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/622>
Hackage <http://haskell.org/cabal/>
Hackage: Cabal and related projects