Hi folks, quoting below the whole mail that went to debian-games@l.d.o[*] and debian-devel@l.d.o. By the time I'm keeping up with a bunch of unread mails, it looks like all answers were directed to debian-devel@l.d.o, so I guess we (pkg-games, minus people already reading d-d) will have to read it through the archives. As a start, the following page should do the trick (though I can't say for sure since I'm offline right now): http://mid.gmane.org/87tzgm6yee.fsf@vorlon.ganneff.de Mraw, KiBi. [*] The mail went to pkg-games-devel@l.a.d.o, but I don't know whether debian-games@l.d.o points there or whether the mail got bounced by someone reading debian-devel. On 25/05/2008, Joerg Jaspert wrote: > Hi, > > one important question lately has been "What should we do with large > packages containing data", like game data, huge icon/wallpaper sets, > some science data sets, etc. Naturally, this is a decision ftpmaster has > to take, so here are our thoughts on it to facilitate discussion and see > if we missed important points but we keep the right to have the last > word how it gets done. :) > > > Basic Problem: "What to do with large data packages?" > > That already has a problem: How to define "large"? One way, which we > chose for now, is simply "everything > 50MB". > > > While the archive software is written in Python, this problem sounds > like a Perl one as "There is more than one way to do (solve) it": > > a.) We can simply say that we don't want this in Debian and people > should use external hosting for such packages. After all they are > for a very small minority usually. > > b.) We can just add another component "data" besides > main/contrib/non-free. > > c.) We can host an own archive for it under control of ftpmaster. > > > The first two seem to have grave problems: > > a.) Is basically no (good) option. It is our job to maintain the > archive, and if there is enough demand we should make it possible to > also host things like these data packages. Additionally it has the > problem that it would require a move of everything that needs those > data packages into contrib, as there wouldn't be a good base for a > Policy exception. > > b.) While that would be the most simple solution it has other problems, > large enough that we decided against it. The biggest one being that > of the principle of least surprise for our mirrors. We are talking > about this to not bloat the main archive too much. If we just add > another component stuff will end up mirrored a lot. Even if we send > an announcement weeks before. Requiring every mirror admin to take a > decision if they want to mirror or exclude it, then adjust their > scripts, is a simple no-go for us. > > So the way to go for us seems to be c.), hosting the archive ourself > (somewhere below data.debian.org probably). > > > For all the rest of the mail I talk about solution c., unless otherwise > stated. > > > So assume we go for solution c. (which is what happens unless someone > has a *very* strong reason not to, which I currently can't imagine) we > will setup a seperate archive for this. This will work the same way as > our main archive does, with a few notable points: > > - It will be solely arch:all, not splitted per architecture. Or, if > someone presents *good* reasons why a data archive needs to be > architecture-aware, we will also offer this, but *NO* autobuilder > support will be provided. > This is meant as a place for large datasets, and those should be > arch independent. And would kill many autobuilders (think of binary > packages having 500, 800 or more megabytes!) > > - It is an own archive, so it needs full source uploads to work, > every data package you create will be a full source package and you > have to split the source between this archive and the rest that goes > into the normal Debian one. > > - We need to change policy. It currently forbids packages in main to > Depend/Recommend something outside of it (which is good). As that > would make the data archive less useful, I propose to change this to > something including the meaning of "Packages in main are allowed to > recommend packages in the data archive". > Dependencies should *not* be allowed, but read the next point. > > - Packages in main need to be installable and not cause their (indirect) > reverse build-depends to FTBFS in the absence of data.debian.org. > If the data is necessary for the package to work and there is a small > dataset (like 5 to 10 MB) that can be reasonably substituted for the > complete data package, the smaller dataset should be included in > main and the package then may depend on "foo-data | foo-data-small". > > > Any comments? > > Timeframe for this? I expect it to be ready within 2 weeks. > > -- > bye, Joerg > Some AM after a mistake: > Sigh. One shouldn't AM in the early AM, as it were. <grin> > _______________________________________________ > Pkg-games-devel mailing list > Pkg-games-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org > http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/pkg-games-devel
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