Heads up: ProGit2 build process is not providing .mobi files for now

[HonkingGoose]

Which download is failing?

The link to the latest .mobi files at https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2 is gone.

Problem

The .mobi files are gone upstream, and so the link to the .mobi files is too.

Context

The ProGit2 project had to disable .mobi builds with progit/progit2#1497 because the kindlegen gem that we use to generate the .mobi files whenever Travis CI makes a build cannot be downloaded anymore. See progit/progit2#1496 for more on this.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Go to the https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2 once the git-scm site build is refreshed.
2. Click on the .mobi link.
3. It will probably break.

Other details

Hi git-scm team, I wanted to provide a heads up for you. I hope I filled the correct issue template! 😄

[pedrorijo91]

wow :) thanks a lot for the heads-up @HonkingGoose !

is there any ETA for getting the .mobi files working again? If I understood correctly, amazon stopped serving a binary which kindlegen wrapped?

[pedrorijo91]

I think it's just a matter of removing from the UI until things are solved, in these lines

git-scm.com/app/views/books/show.html.erb

Lines 26 to 30 in 8b4de72

	<div class="ebooks">
	<% if @book.ebook_mobi %>
	<a href="<%= @book.ebook_mobi %>"><img width="50px" src="/images/mobi.png"/></a>
	<% end %>
	</div>

[HonkingGoose]

I cannot provide any ETA on when the .mobi files will be available again, because I'm not the one that has the ability or knowledge to fix this.

You can follow the asciidoctor-epub3 issue here: asciidoctor/asciidoctor-epub3#363
and the upstream kindlegen issue here: tdtds/kindlegen#42

---

EDIT:

If I understood correctly, amazon stopped serving a binary which kindlegen wrapped?

Yes that's right. The replacement that Amazon provides (Kindle Previewer) does not have a Linux binary.

[HonkingGoose]

I think it's just a matter of removing from the UI until things are solved, in these lines

git-scm.com/app/views/books/show.html.erb

Lines 26 to 30 in 8b4de72

	<div class="ebooks">
	<% if @book.ebook_mobi %>
	<a href="<%= @book.ebook_mobi %>"><img width="50px" src="/images/mobi.png"/></a>
	<% end %>
	</div>

Feel free to propose a pull request to delete the .mobi link. I would recommend putting a comment in, so that it's clear why the link was removed, and maybe link to this issue and the upstream ProGit2 issue.

That way it's documented in your code what happened and why, and people can check if/when the issue is fixed and put the .mobi link back.

[HonkingGoose]

I visited the page after the site build refreshed: the .mobi link is gone. The pdf and epub have links to version 2.1.259, which are current as of now.

So maybe this takes no action on your side, and the system will just pick up the .mobi files once they are available again. 😄

[jnavila]

Calibre has a converter to azw, but I fear the quality of the output is not the same as kindlegen.

[HonkingGoose]

Yeah I searched for some alternative tool-chain and stumbled into Calibre as well, it does have a command line interface that we maybe could use. That would probably require another Travis CI build chain to be built.

And we would first need to know if the .epub -> Calibre -> Kindle output is any good. So maybe we can get a Kindle user to do the conversion and report back on the results?

[peff]

So maybe this takes no action on your side, and the system will just pick up the .mobi files once they are available again.

Yeah, I think that's what's supposed to (and will) happen. But thank you very much for letting us know about the situation.

I suppose we could also provide an older version of the .mobi, if somebody feels strongly enough about that format that they'd prefer out-of-date content to using .epub or whatever. But I'd prefer not to get into that unless somebody asks for it.

[HonkingGoose]

Yeah, I agree: only provide outdated .mobi files if there is actual demand.

This is also a good way to figure out if those .mobi builds are actually valued at all... I've yet to see a issue report here, or on the ProGit2 repo asking about the .mobi files.

[pedrorijo91]

not sure if it's possible to find out how many accesses to the mobi file there were before this. The url seems to be something like

https://github.com/progit/progit2/releases/download/2.*.*/progit.pdf

I can try to find out during the weekend perharps

[HonkingGoose]

Having some historical data would help with making the judgement call if the .mobi files are even worth the support/maintenance cost.

I've seen no comments/issues on the ProGit2 repo, asking about the .mobi files. So it could be that those .mobi files are not really in high demand.
Maybe people just use the version of the book hosted on the website (.html) or download the .epub and .pdf files for their e-book reader or local workstation.

[HonkingGoose]

I've opened a PR upstream at the ProGit2 repository that should re-enable the .mobi files. See progit/progit2#1655, once that's merged I'll close this issue.

[pedrorijo91]

seems like the PR was already merged right @HonkingGoose ?

[HonkingGoose]

Yeah, but it's not working... I'm not sure what I need to do to fix it... 😕