copied from http://bugs.musicbrainz.org/ticket/5457

Currently, at http://ftp.musicbrainz.org/pub/musicbrainz/data/fullexport/ , the name of the latest complete directory is given in the filename of an empty file, eg. "latest-is-20091017-000002".

For retrieval by scripts, it would be useful to have as a complement a file with a stable name, containing the name of the latest directory. For example, a "LATEST" file, whose contents would be "20091017-000002". That would allow easier automated determination of the latest dump directory.

Note that I'm not asking for a symlink into the latest directory, which has a host of problems (notably the risk of getting files from different dumps in a single retrieval session). A text file containing the name of the directory would be read only once at the start of a retrieval session, and can be put in place atomically with an appropriate mv.