Bug#1511: Packages vs. packages for ms-dos compatability

[mitchell@mdd.comm.mot.com (Bill Mitchell)]

PACKAGE: dpkg (and the ftp site)

The "Packages" and "Packages.gz" files do not have ms-dos
compatible filenames.  Depending on the tools used, manipulating
these files on, MSDOS filesystems can be a problem.

I suggest that these files be renamed to "packages" and "packages.gz",
respectively.  they should be placed on the ftp site with these
ms-dos compatible names.  dselect should probably look for the files
first under these names and, if that fails, under their current
names.

Files intended to have ms-dos compatible filenames should have names
with an 8.3 format, and using only the chars [a-z0-9] and '-', '_',
and possibly a few other non-alpha chars.

Two things known to cause problems are names exceeding 8.3 limits
and names having uppercase characters.