Problems with armel repositories and more buildds

["Martin Guy" <martinwguy@yahoo.it>]

Hi
  There seem to be some inconsistencies between the two main armel
repositories, and neither of the main ones seems to work properly any
more.

  The ftp.debian-ports.org repository is missing important packages or
things are uninstallable because of arch-dependent and
arch-independent package version conflicts.

For example: libtool and libmpich-1.0-dev are missing

# apt-get install aptitude
[...]
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  aptitude: Depends: libcwidget0 but it is not installable
# apt-get install libcwidget0
[...]
E: Couldn't find package cwidget0

# apt-get install libgtk2.0-0
[...]
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  libgtk2.0-0: Depends: libgtk2.0-common (= 2.12.3-1) but it is not
going to be installed

I gather the latter is because the arch-independent libgtk2.0-common
has been updated but the armel binary package libgtk2.0-0 hasn't. I am
told this is "normal" - is there really no way to keep a repository
coherent and usable in the face of buildd delays, like keeping both
versions of the arch-indep binary packages around and only updating an
architecture's Packages file with the new arch-indep when the
corresponding arch-dep package comes in?

FWIW, /etc/apt/sources.list contains:
  deb http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian unstable main
  deb http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian unreleased main
and I get the same symptoms listing just "unstable"


The repo at ftp.gnuab.org instead seemed more coherent/complete but I
cannot apt-get update from it any more:
# apt-get update
[...]
Failed to fetch http://ftp.gnuab.org/debian/dists/unstable/Release  No
sections in Release file
/var/lib/apt/lists/ftp.gnuab.org_debian_dists_unstable_Release

and the named file on the local host has length 0. The same happens if
I say "sid" instead of "unstable".

Is there something obvious that I'm missing here? Is anyone else
having similar problems or is it just me?

Also, debian-ports.org admins, can we have http browse permission on
ftp.debian-ports.org please? It would help understand what is going on

   M