Bug#221031: debian-installer: Accept udebs from local mirror with file: URL

[Goswin von Brederlow <brederlo@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de>]

Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org> writes:

> Daniel Schepler wrote:
> > It seems the current debian-installer build process completely ignores
> > entries with file: in /etc/apt/sources.list.  It would be nice if it
> > were possible to build the package using a local mirror without having
> > to set up a local web server just for this, or search through it
> > manually for udebs to put in localudebs.
> 
> You can do that by editing sources.list.local (its name may have just
> changed to sources.list.udeb.local or something like that in CVS), and
> add your own file:// uris.
> 
> The reason the automatic sources.list generation ignores file:// is
> because it tries to find standard debian mirrors which are likely to
> work and have the debian-installer udebs directory on them. It's a lot
> harder for the automated constructor to tell if a file:// is likely to
> be a full mirror, rather than a partial mirror, or a local repository,
> and if it messes up I get FTBFS reports, so it's best to keep it
> conservative in what it accepts. But you can easily override the
> generated sources.list with the .local one.

I think partial file mirrors are as common as partial
ftp/http/rsh/ssh/copy mirrors so singeling file urls out is strange.

I changes the sources.list generation to allow file: urls. On the
other hand I added an explaining message when apt-get update fails:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Failed to update the Packages file. This usually means of of two things:

A) $LIST does not contain a vaild repository.
   You can override the generates sources.list.$TYPE
   with sources.list.$TYPE.local if you haven't done so yet.

B) The repository in $LIST is not reachable.
   If you are not working online use 'export ONLINE=n' to skip updating
   the Packages files. Beware that this can result in images with
   out-of-date packages and should be used for private developement only.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

I hope thats clear enough to prevent FTBFS bugs due to partial
mirrors.

MfG
        Goswin