re:Package splitting and MSDOS names conversion
>I have no intention of not supporting floppy-based installation, and
>the question is not whether we keep the msdos tree or not. (The msdos
>tree is also required for people using an intermediate system with
>short filenames.)
Good!
>If the packages in the main tree are split they will be named
> <package>-<version>.<n>of<m>.deb
>and you can install them with dpkg -i *.deb using current versions of
>dpkg.
As long as all the filenames are mentioned in the "Packages" files, I'll
make sure 'dftp' supports it either way.
>Asking users to split the files themselves is not an option, because
>(a) they will probably not have any decent file-splitting tools, (b)
>we don't know what system they might be having to use to access the
>Internet and (c) this doesn't help at all the problem of FTPing large
>files around.
(a) They already have rawrite if they created the base disks. Getting a
"split" program (especially one designed to make Debian easier to install)
is not out of the question and, in my opinion, very beneficial.
(b) Every system will have some form of "split" available somewhere.
(c) No, but REGET does.
>The discussion is close to persuading me that we should split the
>files in the binary tree too.
Under no circumstances should you have the msdos tree have different files
than the main binary. Doing so would double the distribution size and
force many mirrors to stop carrying at least one of the directories, if
not the entire distribution. It's one or the other.
Brian
( bcwhite@bnr.ca )
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In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they're not.
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