Re: Debian archive requirements

[Rob Browning <rlb@cs.utexas.edu>]

John Lines <john@paladin.demon.co.uk> writes:

> Finding packages (catagories): At present packages are kept in
> directories according to their function (e.g.  admin, games etc) is
> this actually a requirement, or should we use keywords, indexes and
> our own tools for packages selection ?

For my part, I'd like to see us dump the fixed directory tree as our
main repository altogether.  I think we should move the a keywords
based scheme with one giant "hashed" directory tree (which fits in
with the package pool idea), and then we should generate tools that
will allow us to link this pool to more traditional schemes when
necessary.

For example, the ftp-mirroring problem could be handled with a tool
that we kept up to date that would allow you to say:

  debian-gen-archivelist \
    --ftp-tree main --dist stable \
    --exclude-packages ./excluded-pkgs.txt
    --exclude-keywords ./excluded-kwds.txt

This might generate a list of name pairs where the first was the url
of the package in our tree, and the second was where to put it, once
retrieved, in order to generate an ftp mirror.

(Or we might want to handle this some other way, like writing our own
 debian-mirror tool that would support both debian package pool style
 mirrors and standard ftp mirrors.  I've written stuff like this
 before, so I could probably help if I can get the time...)

-- 
Rob Browning <rlb@cs.utexas.edu> PGP=E80E0D04F521A094 532B97F5D64E3930