Re: Stop archive bloat: 47MB gmt-coast-full_19991001-1.deb
Sami Dalouche <debian@ifrance.com> writes:
...
> I think we should keep so many packages because this is one of the elements
> which makes the debian distro better than the other but we shouldn't put all
> the packages in the same place.
> I think we should first make new sections and subsections and sort all of
> the actually present packages into them. But we must really think a lot
> to these sections and make them as most significative as we can.
> for example, we shouldn't put all graphics related packages in the diretory
> graphics but we should do a thing like this :
>
> * media
> - graphics
> - viewer (e.g. electric eyes)
> - editors (e.g. Gimp)
> - libs
> - [...]
> - sound
> - editor
> - mixer
> - libs
> - [...]
>
> We should allow symlinking packages into other sections if they can do many
> things. For example, Imagemagick is an image editor but his concept makes
> from him a great image viewer. So, I think we should put the .deb in
> media/graphics/editors and symlink it to media/graphics/viewer.
I think thats something that should be carried in the Package.gz file
and the control.tar.gz of a package, but not in the directory
structure. It will be much harder to find a package and to sort needed
packages and unneeded packages.
I think there should be a split between required, standard, optional
that shows up in the directory structure. That way mirrors could
stop mirroring optional if space is a constrain.
Creating subdirs as you describe won´t help reducing the size but
makes it more complicated. Also sorting would be difficult, i.e. how
do you easily list all packages that are viewers, as the menu system
would need to do.
> So, when we will a proper directory structure, we will be able to go to the
> next step :
> Determining which packages have the same goal as others. We can for example
> see that there are many mixers available in the sound section. We should
> determine the best [ or the prefered ] mixer for X and the best mixer for
> the console. We should do the same for all packages in all sections. I know
> there would be many conflicts, but when it's too deep, we could add both of the
> packages in the main section. I think particulary to Apache vs Roxen. This
> debate would never finish, so it means that both are the best and both of
> them must be added to the main section. In other words, main would mean
> "THE BEST SOFTWARE" and by best, I mean the most powerful, not the
> beginner's software. Inn would fit in main while the others news transport
> system wouldn't.
> I think a lot of clean in the editor section must be done too ! VI and (X)Emacs
> should be the only intheractive editor present in main !
Which vi, I think debian has 3 or 4 of them? What about joe, ae,
mcedit, zile? That will just cause a big flame war. I use zile for
speed and xemacs for power and if they aren´t in main I will be pretty
disapointed. At the end of the flamewar all editors will be in main
again, so we can leave them there to start with.
Your ideas are only usefull for sorting in console-apt/dselect to aid
the users decisions. They should be reflected in the Packages.gz files
and not in the directory structure.
> For the rest I've not more ideas on the moment, but I'm sure that we can do
> a largely better distro !
>
> BTW, I think that we should add another distro ! Yes, really ! Stable /
> Unstable is too hard : You have the choice in having stable but very
> out-dated software and in having updated software but which are too much
> updated to be stable !
Thats another point and its very true. The release cycle of debian is
to slow.
I would like to have a distro called testing, where package go to when
uploaded (or Incomming as its called now). People could then test
them. The package "popularity-contest" would then record if the
package is used and mail that to the debian server. If a Package was
used for some time (maybe a week) by a few people (maybe 5) without
bugreports coming in, it would automatically be moved to unstable
(after testing that all packages it depends on are moved already).
This method would ensure that unstable isn´t as experimental as it is
now. There wouldn't be any packages that don´t even install or don´t
work correctly in an easy to detect way, e.g. segfault on startup. It
would greatly increase the quality of unstable and would enable many
people to use unstable on production systems.
> I think we should make another distro which would contain the stable version
> of every software, not the cvs version or the version which was released 2
> years ago !
>
May the Source be with you.
Goswin
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