CD split proposal

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org>]

Not sure if this is the right spot for this, but here goes:

We have a problem in that our distribution is getting huge.  This is
not a problem per se for the users that track Debian over the network
(though it may be an impact on mirrors, but disk capacity is going up
faster than Debian is growing, I think.)

It IS a problem when our dist grows to a 5-CD or even 7-CD
distribution with no good way of separtion, as we have today.

So what can we do?

I propose:
 1. Leave the FTP archive as-is, fundamentally.  There is no need
    for separation there.
 2. Separate the CD set into task-oriented CDs.  For instance:
    * A Base CD, containing the installable stuff, libraries,
      various other things.
    * A games CD
    * An X Apps CD.  Gnome, etc.
    * A development CD.  gcc, gdb, python, etc.
    * Servers CD.
    Etc.  These may need to be adjusted based on size.  It is
    basically a size-oriented extension of the task concept.
 3. Do this sepraation for both binaries and source.
 4. Most important.  Make the first CD have a master index, and have
    package utilities (apt-get?) know which CD the person needs
    to install a given package.

Obviously this will not occur for potato but it is a somewhat pressing 
need.  Thoughts?