Re: Bug#32595: remove obsolete and confusing acquisition methods: harddisk, mounted, cdrom, nfs

[Andy Mortimer <andy.mortimer@zetnet.co.uk>]

Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@ualberta.ca> writes:

> > 2) A local mirror, hand constructed. No extra or useless packages in there.
> > Apt doesn't construct or handle this type of arrangement well by default.
> > The mounted method deals with this just fine.
> 
> I'd be interested to know how any other method handles this, how do you
> inform dselect what packages are in your local mirror so you can select
> them?

dpkg-mountable handles it thusly:

  1. If there's a Packages.gz file in the directory, use that. If
     files from that are missing then -- like your comment about Apt
     -- it will be a little verbose if you try to install any of them, 
     but will carry on and do the rest. (Because of the way it's
     written, it won't look for older versions anywhere else right
     now).

  2. For mirrors it thinks of as "local", it will use
     dpkg-scanpackages to construct a Packages file if none already
     exists, and will keep it up-to-date automatically based on what
     files are there. (This is a bit bad because it really needs the
     override file from Master too).

Local directory is used to override a "source" directory, basically
like two lines in sources.list; the intention is that the main
directory is a Debian mirror, and the local directory can be used for
some upgraded pacakges if (for example) the mirror is on a CD-ROM or
NFS.

Andy

-- 
Andy Mortimer                                 andy.mortimer@zetnet.co.uk
-- 
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