Re: Finding a source package

[luther@maxime.u-strasbg.fr]

On Wed, Sep 30, 1998 at 12:34:54PM -0400, James A. Treacy wrote:
> Guy Maor wrote:
> > Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca> writes:
> > 
> > > I suggest that we enhance the source: field to include the section, for
> > > instance for aalib it could look like
> > > 
> > > source: libs/aalib
> > 
> > And for non-free and contrib packages, it would prepend non-free or
> > contrib to the front?
> > 
> Choose whatever method you like.
> 
> > I can implement this in dpkg-scanpackages, btw.
> > 
> There are still 2 problems in finding the source files to packages.
> 
> First, due to NMU uploads to other architectures, the source version
> may not match the version: in the package you are looking for.
> This means you need to search the archive for the name of the .dsc
> file. There are about 75 version mismatches in slink (only 2 in hamm)
> so this is not a minor issue.
> 
> Second, even if you find the name of the .dsc file you need to look
> in every one to find the names of the source files. This isn't a big
> problem when creating the Packages pages as the archive is on the
> same machine (although it is rather inefficient), but is a real problem
> if apt wants to add the ability to fetch source.
> 
> If it is too difficult to make changes to the archive to avoid these
> problems, then I propose we add a new file, at the same level as the
> Contents files, called Source, which is a bit like a super-dsc file.
> It's format would be something like:
> 
> Source: ld.so
> Version: 1.9.9-5
> Distrib: main
> Section: base
> Binary: ldso, libdl1-altdev                        (this line is optional)
> Maintainer: David Engel <david@debian.org>         (this line is optional)
> Architecture: any                                  (this line is optional)
> Files: 
>  fca767c11c36553f281be5851010a6f3 115523 ld.so_1.9.9-5.tar.gz
> 
> If there are plans to allow multiple source versions into the archive
> simultaneously then this will need to be rethought.

also, since you are at things like that, another functionality that i would have
liked a lot, and that i think would be useful also for being sure all source
needed to build every package is available, is source dependencies, id est, a
source package (or at least the Source file descibing the source package) would
list all packages that are needed to actually build this package.

This way, you can check for every packages, if the source for it is present, and
then for each source package, if all necessary other packages are still
available.

This will help for people downloading individual sources to build packages and
don't know which packages are needed for uit.

Also this would help to have autocompilation of the entire distribution or such.

Friendly,

Sven LUTHER