At 07:18 AM 10/9/00 -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
This is true of every section in the archive. Almost every package can conceivably fit in one of two or more sections, and which one they end up in is essentially arbitrary. Noone uses the sections for anything real today; they're just a historical relic. (And BTW base is a true relic since it doesn't even contain the entire base sysrem anymore.)
What's the point of sections then? We might just as well sort packages alphabetically-- at least that way, I'd have a better chance of finding something I was looking for. As it is, the only way I ever install a new package is by someone telling me it exists.
It's very clear to me that something needs to be done to address this problem by the time woody releases-- in fact, I'll go so far as to say we need to make this a release goal for woody. I understand this is not a small problem-- it's big, it's ugly, and affects every single package in Debian. But there has got to be a better way than what we're
doing now.There's a lot of inertia involved in our current setup, but the longer we wait to do something about it, the worse it'll get. If you want a concrete suggestion, I really like Daniel Burrows' suggestion. It's not complete, but if we build in a process for updating it, then the situation will be better. It won't be ideal-- it'll *never* be ideal. But darn near
anything is better than what we have now. -=Eric