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Re: Misclassification of packages; "libs" and "doc" sections



Jason Henry Parker <jasonp@uq.net.au> writes:

> James Antill <james@and.org> writes:
> 
> > Roland Bauerschmidt <rb@debian.org> writes:
> > > * Jason Henry Parker <jasonp@uq.net.au> [001011 09:54]:
> > > > I find it much easier to ftp to the binary-i386 directory of my
> > > > mirror, and perform searches like
> > > > ftp> ls */*catan*
> >  This == "apt-cache --name-only search catan"
> 
> And if apt isn't available?

 I don't think debian should go out of it's way to help non debian
users.

>                              If I'm searching for a version of some
> package not in the distribution I have mentioned in my sources.list?

 Then add it to sources.list ? -- What am I missing here.

> If I'm away from my debian boxes and want to get the orig.tar.gz of
> some package?

 http://www.freshmeat.net/

> These are all situations where suggesting apt-cache is useless, and
> searching by category should be useful.  But it's not useful.

 Exactly, so why suggest it.
 Other ideas...

 Put a cgi on www.debian.org to provide apt-cache via. a web page.

 Someone take apt-cache and package it by itself, so you can use it
like rpmfind.

> > > Why don't you use apt-get for this? Sections _are_ useful for those that
> > > do not know what the name of the package is, etc. 
> 
> As I said, I find they just get in the way if I try to use them, and
> it's much easier to ls with a wildcard if apt isn't available.


 Note that I didn't say the above (count the '>').

> I don't know of any way to search by section with apt-cache; which
> version are you running?

 None, but why would you want to.

 Saying that currently Sections do provide some minimal use in that
they split up the directories in debian/stable/main ... but an MD5
directory split would do that even better.

-- 
James Antill -- james@and.org
"If we can't keep this sort of thing out of the kernel, we might as well
pack it up and go run Solaris." -- Larry McVoy.



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