Debian as a CORBA component
It has annoyed me for some time that the web interface to
packages.debian.org only displays i386 packages. So, I started thinking
about how to implement a replacement, and I realized I really needed to
be able to talk to the postgres database on auric. That alone cried out
for a CORBA interface. Of course, once we have a CORBA interface to the
archive, why not a CORBA interface to the BTS? And in fact all of
Debian's services?
And with CORBA as the interface, there's no reason why it shouldn't be
accessible from anywhere in the world. The possibilities are numerous.
For example, given a good CORBA interface to the archive, it is trivial
to implement a "madison" command that runs on your own machine, and
contacts the archive server. But there's also no reason it would have
to run on a tty; imagine a full-blown GNOME "Debian Development"
application that would allow you to browse the archive, look at packages
and see their bugs, build logs, information about the maintainer, etc.
So, yes, this is a grand plan. But I've in fact already created a
working prototype of the Packages and Bugs interface, along with sample
Python implementations. For the impatient, visit:
http://cvs.verbum.org/debian/packages.d.o-ng/
In order to actually run the code there, you will need some data. The
madison-server.py requires you to import a dump of the package database
from /org/ftp.debian.org/backup on auric. And the bug-server.py
requires some .idx files from /org/bugs.debian.org/spool/realtime on
master.
If someone out there is not a developer, but is interested in helping me
hack on this, I can make those files available.
Mainly, I want to announce this project now, since I'll need the help of
a lot of different people, especially with designing the IDL interfaces,
and also I think this will be a nice base for people to build their own
applications on, so I'd like to get initial comments on the interface
now.
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