KNewStuff web caching

[Hy Murveit]

I have a question about web-caching related to KNewStuff.

*Background*
I am a KStars developer, and asked Jasem (KStars lead) to post some "new
stuff" for me.
He did (or perhaps asked someone else to) and now when one goes to
https://cdn.kde.org/edu/kstars/main.xml one gets a list that includes my
"new stuff".

Actually the kstars.knsrc says ProvidersUrl=
https://indilib.org/jdownloads/knewstuff/providers.xml
but when you go there it returns

<knewstuffproviders>
<provider downloadurl="https://edu.kde.org/kstars/downloads/main.xml";
nouploadurl="https://edu.kde.org/contrib/"; icon="
http://edu.kde.org/pics/projects/cr32-app-kstars.png";>
<title>KStars Data</title>
</provider>
<provider downloadurl="https://indilib.org/jdownloads/knewstuff/dso.xml";
nouploadurl="https://edu.kde.org/contrib/"; icon="
http://edu.kde.org/pics/projects/cr32-app-kstars.png";>
<title>KStars Data</title>
</provider>
</knewstuffproviders>


and https://edu.kde.org/kstars/downloads/main.xml redirects to
https://cdn.kde.org/edu/kstars/main.xml

Anyway, here's the new item:

<stuff>
<name>ImagingPlanner Catalog1</name>
<type>ImagingPlanner</type>
<author email="kstars-de...@kde.org">Hy Murveit</author>
<licence>Free noncommercial ShareAlike use with credit. Creative Commons
license. Credit for individual images in .csv files.</licence>
<summary lang="en">Catalog 1 for the KStars ImagingPlanner tool.</summary>
<version>1.0</version>
<release>1</release>
<releasedate>2024-11-06</releasedate>
<downloadsize1>6700</downloadsize1>
<preview lang="en">
https://cdn.kde.org/edu/kstars/previews/imagingplanner-screenshot.jpg
</preview>
<payload lang="en">
https://cdn.kde.org/edu/kstars/ImagingPlanner-catalog1.tar.gz</payload>
<rating>5</rating>
<downloads>0</downloads>
</stuff>


I successfully use my browser to download/see
https://cdn.kde.org/edu/kstars/ImagingPlanner-catalog1.tar.gz
or
https://cdn.kde.org/edu/kstars/previews/imagingplanner-screenshot.jpg
So, all seems cool when using browsers!

*The problem*
The problem is that I can't see the new content from within KStars' KF5
implementation of KNewStuff. I just see the "stuff" that existed before.
Other folks using KStars on other machines do see my new stuff. Since I can
see it with my browsers, and others can see it from within KStars, I assume
the problem is that somehow/somewhere in the KDE libraries my local machine
is caching the older web pages so that when KNewStuff goes to fetch it, it
only sees the cached old content.

Is that possible? If so, how would I clear that web cache?  This happens
both when I run KStars on my Mac laptop, and when I run it on an Ubuntu VM
on my laptop.  It doesn't happen on browsers from those machines (but I did
clear the browser's caches when I had this problem early on).

Also, do you think there's a caching configuration issue on the hosting web
server for that page?

Thanks,
Hy