Re: slink is gone, goals for potato?

[Daniel James Patterson <danpat@cs.rmit.edu.au>]

On Mon, Mar 15, 1999 at 12:48:31PM -0800, Jim Pick wrote:
> 
> > I was thinking about the *orig.tar.gz and *diff.gz, not for the packages.
> > This gives us some more space on mirrors and on our source-cd. 
> 
> One problem - most the *.orig.tar.gz files are simply the renamed
> upstream packages.  If we unpack and repack them, then we no longer
> have "pristine" sources.
> 

I don't know if this has been discussed before, but why not simply
provide the .diff.gz's on the source distribution and provide
a pointer to the upstream source instead of providing it.

Now the moment I say this, a few problems spring to mind.  1) What
happens if the upstream source dissapears?  2) What if the upstream
source only provides the most recent version of their code?

Isn't simply providing patches what FreeBSD do with their "ports" collection
thing?

daniel