Re: Finding a source package
Guy Maor wrote:
> <treacy@debian.org> (James A. Treacy) writes:
>
> > First, due to NMU uploads to other architectures, the source version
> > may not match the version: in the package you are looking for.
>
> This could be corrected with dpkg-scanpackages, but that's not really
> the right thing to do. I don't know the best way to handle this.
>
> > Second, even if you find the name of the .dsc file you need to look
> > in every one to find the names of the source files.
>
> Huh? If you can find the dsc, then the other source files will be
> right along with it.
>
You are assuming that a copy of the archive is sitting on the local machine.
For generating Debian web pages that isn't a problem, but if apt wants to add
the downloading of source files then this becomes a problem. Should
apt have to download the dsc file for a package before it knows what the
source files are?
> I'll look into having dpkg-scanpackages scan the dsc's as well and add
> sections at least. AFAIK, no programs parses them yet? I'd rather
> not have a new index file.
>
I also would rather not have a new index file, but Jason and I have not come
up with an alternative.
Even though it is possible to find the information needed to generate (working)
source downloading for the Packages web pages, it would be much more efficient
if every dsc file didn't need to be scanned in the process.
> > If there are plans to allow multiple source versions into the archive
> > simultaneously then this will need to be rethought.
>
> No such plans.
>
This is not good. Suppose one port needs a wildly different version of a program
to have it work on that architecture. Only the source to one of the versions will
be available. I admit this isn't common. It is common, though, for the versions on
different architectures to be off. If we could guarantee that it was always the latest
version of source left in the archive it wouldn't be so bad. What happens though is
an old version of a package is uploaded for one port after a newer version has been
released for a different port - overwriting the new version.
This needs to be fixed.
Jay Treacy
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