Re: intent to package mrename
In article <[🔎] 20000809104150.E23075@kitenet.net> you wrote:
>> One of the nice things about Debian is (for me) that I can apt-get install
>> <anything> and it will problably work because there is a package for almost
>> everything.
> How is a new archive structure going to prevent you from having to spend
> time downloading packages files before an "apt-get install <anything>"
> will work?
The package meta-data explosion is a real problem, and one that we need to
work on creative technical solutions to address. Both the download times over
slow links for Packages information and the VM requirements of our package
management toolset are getting out of control. The best answers I have heard
so far are of the "split Debian into a core and various optional sections"
variety, and they still feel "icky" to me.
However, there is nothing in Debian policies or history that suggests that
we should be giving someone a hard time about packaging some additional
utility regardless of whether it duplications functionality solely on the
basis of meta-data bloat. Why pick on this poor soul?
As an aside, I had the experience of trying to install potato on a laptop
with small RAM and hard disk recently. While the resulting installation
would have run fine, dpkg's virtual memory needs completely prevented use of
our normal packaging toolset to complete the installation. That was very
frustrating. Maybe the emdebian crowd will generate some good ideas...
Bdale
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