Aversa

Aversa is a little utility for creating and viewing BitTorrent metainfo files.

Installation: Download the zip file from the project page and unzip it. Or, better yet, use the RubyGem that's on the same page.

Running:

• Run it from the command line to view an existing metainfo file:

  $ ./aversa.rb --decode http://www.tlm-project.org/kernels/2.6.x/linux-2.6.5.tar.bz2.torrent
  info
   name linux-2.6.5.tar.bz2
   pieces [67 SHA checksums]
   piece length 524288
   length 34684611
  creation date Thu May 06 23:49:40 EDT 2004
  comment Mirror Provided By TLMP: http://www.tlm-project.org
  announce http://tracker.tlm-project.org:6969/announce
  								

• You can also create a new metainfo file:

  [tom@hal bt]$ ./aversa.rb --makemetafile wxruby-0.5.0-mswin.exe,http://rubyforge.org:6969/announce
  announce http://rubyforge.org:6969/announce
  created by Aversa (http://aversa.rubyforge.org) v0.3
  creation date Mon Aug 30 10:44:29 EDT 2004
  info
   length 1424864
   name wxruby-0.5.0-mswin.exe
   piece length 262144
   pieces [6 SHA checksums]
  [tom@hal bt]$
  								

  Note that creating a new file may take some time if the file is large. For comparison, it takes Aversa about a quarter of a second to create a metainfo file for the 11 MB Ruby Windows Installer on my workstation.

The latest rdocs are here.

• What does "Aversa" mean?
  • It's Romanian for "torrent".
• What's next for Avera?
  • Probably a Ruby tracker.