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Re: Diety UI draft



Brandon Mitchell wrote:
> 
> Now that I'm back at my box, let me give you an example.  From dselect:
> Using FTP to check directories...(stop with ^C)
> 
> [snip of other info]
> Connecting to localhost...
> Login as bhmit1...
> Enter password for ftp:
> Setting transfer mode to binary...
> Cd to /usr/local/mirror...
> Checking ./binary-i386...
> Warning: Couldn't find a Packages file in ./binary-i386
> This may not be a problem if the directory is a symbolic link
> Closing ftp connection...
> press return to continue
> 
> and my abnormal directory structure:
> bhmit1@hobbes(p1):bhmit1$ ls /usr/local/mirror/
> Packages.gz   contrib       non-us
> bo            non-free      override.all
> bhmit1@hobbes(p1):bhmit1$ ls /usr/local/mirror/bo
> binary-all   binary-i386  disks-i386
> 
> Will diety handle this better?

I would hope that deity wouldn't be so rigid.  I personally want deity
to do a search starting at every URL on the source list looking for
Packages.gz files.  Effectively doing a:

    find <list of URLs> -maxdepth 5 -name Packages.gz

My understanding is that a Packages.gz file can really be located
anywhere.  It's a matter of how much of the hierarchy you want to
include, and how big you want the Packages.gz file to be.

However, that is really more of an implementation problem than a
User Interface problem.

> > Since deity allows you to use a source list (a list of sources of
> > deb packages) you can list as many or few sources as you wish.  These
> > sources can be local (floppy/harddisk/cdrom/tape) or remote (nfs/ftp/
> > http/smb/ncfs).  You'd just add the appropriate "url" to your source
> > list that points to you local directory of deb packages.
> >
> > Check out:
> >
> >     http://www.verisim.com/~behanw/deity/deity-ui_0.10.html#src
> 
> Hmmm... I think I need to work on my wording (aren't you glad I didn't
> write the draft :-).  The source stuff sounds like it's very helpful for
> porting.  I was recently talking to a sys adm of a very diverse and large
> network.  If the packages can be _easily_ recompiled for whatever platform
> I can see many new applications of debian opening up.

Note that source lists have nothing to do with source code, or
recompiling.  They have to do with where to find hierarchies of debian
packages.  If you haven't already, I suggest reading the deity UI spec
about source lists.  I provided the url just above.

> I guess the question I wanted to ask (hypothetically since I can't think
> of a good reason for this to happen) is if diety can handle a site if
> there isn't a packages file.  I'm just brainstorming, but every once in a
> while something good comes out :-)

All a Packages file is, is a cache of all the header info for all the
packages in a hierarchy.  Generating the Packages.gz files takes
quite a bit of time (try dpkg-scanpackages sometime if you haven't
already).  The problem is that if a site (especially a remote site)
doesn't have a Packages.gz file, every package on that site must
be read in order to get the info that is normally read from the
Packages.gz file.  I don't think that the kind of overhead that
generating a Packages.gz file incures is something that users will
tolerate.

Not to mention that the only way of really detecting a debian directory
is by the existance of a Packages.gz file.

My thinking is that every shared source of Debian packages will have
to have a Packages.gz file.  Local directories of debian packages

> BTW, is the UI the only thing the diety team has released so
> far, I'd be interested to see anything else that has been put out for the
> public.

The only other source of deity info is:

    http://www.genxl.com/deity/

But it deals much more with future versions.  The first version of
deity will not have network installing capability.  8(

I hope these answer your questions.

Behan

-- 
Behan Webster     mailto:behanw@verisim.com
+1-613-224-7547   http://www.verisim.com/


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