mirror the Packages files _after_ the packages!
I know you Debian people think it's just hilarious when users try to
apt-get upgrade during the period after when the Packages files
arrive on the mirrors, but before the packages they describe have
fully arrived.
"Haw haw haw, try again later", you say, never thinking that maybe
writing the Packages files last would be the right thing to do.
"The problem can't persist more then a couple of hours, what's the big
deal?"
Well, the connection to mirror-upstream broke mid-mirror-push this
time during Chinese New Years. Perhaps 10 days before the system
administrator will be back in the office to see what happened.
"Haw haw haw, try another mirror. Haw haw haw."
The other local mirrors have the same problem, and their system admins are
also on vacation. Foreign mirrors are on slow links.
So not fixing bug 6786 (just write the $#@% Packages file after
writing the packages) causes users' apt-get upgrades to fail
needlessly... down for 10 days. Great.
The Debian whippersnappers don't see the danger of needlessly leaving
mirrors in a broken state "for only a couple of hours a day, what's
the big deal" ... well if the mirror mechanism breaks during this
broken state, then "couple of hours" becomes indefinitely.
I can't think of any other case in Computer Science where one updates
a descriptor before updating the thing described!!! How can you defend
that??? No smug remarks can defend that!
"Never bothered me", yeah well wait until you are giving your next
apt-get upgrade demonstration and now it's too late, you did
apt-get update && apt-get upgrade instead of
apt-get upgrade && apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
and now you have to tell the class to "wait a couple of hours" until
you can show them anything.
Yeah I know, "the more I complain, the more it's not going to get
done."
OK, can somebody send me the section of code so I can fix it then?
Err http://xxxxxx.linux.org.xx sid/main xxxxxxxxxxxx 404 Not Found
Failed to fetch http://xxxxxx.linux.org.xx/debian/pool/main/xxxxx
Fetched 26.6MB in 2m39s (167kB/s)
E: Some files failed to download
Error 100
P.S., "a couple hours" is for your fancy mirror's connections.
Some mirrors far away might be in the broken state (Packages* arrived,
not all packages arrived) for half a day each day!
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