Re: Ideas

["J.A. Bezemer" <costar@panic.et.tudelft.nl>]

On Mon, 28 Jun 1999, John Pearson wrote:

> If you alter dpkg-multicd, can it be done in a 'CD-neutral' way,
> so that the text doesn't imply a specific CD set is in use?
> For example, a message like 
> "Please insert CD 2 of your multi-CD set" implies a particular
> arrangement of packages across the CDs; a message like
> "Please insert your 'Packages Master' CD" can be dealt with
> on the label of the CD.

Those CD labels are in the (IIRC) /.disc/info file on the CD itself, and used
in the Packages.cd(.gz) files. They are just identification strings; if you
make your own CDs, they can be anything you like.

Now that we're talking about that, I personally don't really like the current
(2.1r0) labeling system. It's not newbie-frendly. So let me propose the
following labels:

   "Debian GNU/Linux 2.1 Official i386 Binary-1"
                                  m68k        2  etc.

   "Debian GNU/Linux 2.1r3 Official sparc Binary-1"
                                    alpha        2  etc.

   "Debian GNU/Linux 2.1 Official Source-1"
                                         2

(Note: `2.1' without `r0' because that would only be confusing. And no one
knew there would be a `r3' ;-)
Maybe you can add something to these labels like "(build 19990416)", if that's
really needed.
And people really don't care that `stable main contrib' is on that CD. Lots
of users don't even know what `stable' `main' and `contrib' mean. 

The way it's now, there are four CDs, just "#1", "#2", "#3" and "#4". And when
[U]pdating with multi_cd, you have to insert "the last disc". But that's not
"#4" but "#2". What we need are just plain _names_, not numbers (after all, we
all use www.debian.org, not 209.81.8.242). "Insert the last Binary disc" is
much less confusing of we have "Binary-1" and "Binary-2" and maybe
"Binary-3/Extras" CDs; no one will insert the "Source-2" disc.


Regards,
  Anne Bezemer