On Wed, 20 May 1998, Ian Jackson wrote:
> So, you are hereby warned (again) that at some point in the future the
> following may well change the format and location of:
>
> /var/lib/dpkg/status and /var/lib/dpkg/updates
> /var/lib/dpkg/available
> /var/lib/dpkg/info/*.list
>
> If they do there will be little warning. I have plans on my todo list
> which will make these things change. If you need an interface to this
I hope at least we will be able to see what you are going to change it to
before you change it :>
> information that isn't currently available you should report it as a
> bug. If you maintain a library or other program that legitimately
> accesses these files you will need to coordinate with me nearer the
> time to make sure that the transition happens in an orderly way.
Well, to make APT happy I need dpkg to implement two new commands,
--print-status-file -- Send the status file to stdout. Right now
this would be just like cat /var/lib/dpkg/status except that
it would handle the updates directory
--print-status-tag -- Display an opaque string that indicates the current
'revision' of the status file. For now a string that has the size and
mtime would be ample (this serves the same purpose as an MD5 - MD5 is
overkill however)
status-tag is required to keep the cached copy of the status file in sync
with dpkg's view of the world - each time APT starts it would query dpkg
and check if it needs to reload the status file. Right now it uses a
mtime+size comparision.
Jason
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