Bug#4378: incomplete Packages files and incomplete distributions
On Mon, 2 Sep 1996, Bdale Garbee wrote:
> Right now, the contrib and non-free trees are, by definition, "unstable"
> since they aren't frozen at release time. I don't think this is very nice
> for folks who are trying to run "latest stable" bits all the time.
There are prominent notices in both the contrib and non-free
directories that software contained there is not an official part of
Debian. It's therefore not unreasonable to require users to install
packages from unstable to use contrib and non-free packages.
> Another way of looking at it that I spent some time on one weekend is that
> what you really want on the FTP server is something like a versioned filesystem
> effect, where you could have an "object pool" of packages with potentially
> multiple revisions per package present.
This is just a more general restatement of the problem. It is more
complex and has advantages which we don't require, among them allowing
other than two versions per package and a small cost for more than two
releases.
> I thought it would be easy to make
> 'contrib' and 'non-free' be directories at the same level as 'base', 'devel',
> and so forth... but met some reluctance about "making it harder" for CD-ROM
> folk to do the right things by having these trees exist inside a release tree.
And it violates our assertion that they are not official parts of Debian.
> Seems like a report to the owners of packages in question indicating
> issues with the dependency tree for files installed in the stable/unstable
> hierarchies would be generally useful.
That's really what the bug is about. I intend to close it when
something like this is implemented.
> I don't have time right now, or I'd
> offer to write it.
Is this the offical Debian slogan??
Guy
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