deb-subset: proposal for yet another partial Debian mirroring tool

[Alexey Mahotkin <alexm@hsys.msk.ru>]

Hello,

I think I am going to implement the deb-subset as described below,
unless someone points me to an already-existing implementation.


Feel free to contact me if you have any comments. 


Description
------------

deb-subset makes a local copy of Debian packages archive.


Primary goals
--------------

- do as much by default as possible -- only the necessary actions
  should be explicitly specified by user;

- allow very efficient disk space and traffic usage;

- do not cut corners;


Use cases
----------

- I want to have a local copy of packages that I do use;

- machine that I want to install packages to is connected to Internet
  via a slow link;

- I have a machine connected to an Internet over a fast link; this
  machine does not necessarily run Debian;

- I use relatively small part of Debian, so I would like to simply
  specify which packages I really need;

- I use only a couple of arches, so I'd like to specify them and do
  not bother with others;

- I do not want to bother with dependencies, so I'd like to specify
  simply: "xemacs21", and get all of its prerequisites downloaded
  automatically;

- I always use essential packages, and do not want to specify them
  explicitly;

- if I discontinue using some package, I want all of its
  prerequisites, which are not used for something else, to disappear
  from the archive; of course, the package itself should disappear
  also;

- I want complete range of downloading methods: FTP, HTTP, HTTP
  w/proxy, rsync, local (to make subsets of subsets);

- I want to use several sources:

  - I want to specify explicitly which packages should be downloaded
    from each particular source;

  - I want to merge all of the packages from different sources into a
    single local directory;


- occasionally I start to use new package, and I want an option of
  downloading this package immediately, with a minimal set of its
  prerequisites; I do not want to wait until all of the archive
  becomes updated;

- the software must be very modular and written in Perl;


Existing solutions
-------------------

I had seen apt-move, mirror, wget -r, dpartialmirror, and debmirror.
They are excellent for their purpose, but none of them fit my needs.


--alexm


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