[pca] how to verify md5(from CHECKSUMS file) of patches downloaded

[Martin Paul]

Martin Paul wrote:
> The reaons (or at least one reason) for differing checksums is that 
> Sun/Oracle sometimes changes a patch zip file's contents after first 
> publishing, like updating README files. As far as I know any functional 
> change would trigger a new revision.

A small addendum: I used a second script to compare the contents of my local 
copy with the current ZIP file from Oracle's server of about 200 patches with 
differing checksums, to verify this statement. In none of them a file other than 
"README.<patch-id>" or "LEGAL_LICENSE.TXT" has changed.

So it's safe to assume that there will be no functional changes between 
different copies of the same patch. As for READMEs - if you run a pca proxy, you 
can use "pca --force --readme <patch-ID>" to instruct the proxy to always 
download the current README from Oracle, instead of using a local copy in the cache.

Martin.