On Sun, 2002-12-08 at 20:51, Nick Phillips wrote: > /me wonders whether some concept of namespaces in package names would > be useful before we make it too easy for world + dog to run large > repositories of .debs - Ximian was bad enough on its own, last I had to > recover a system from someone using it... I dread to think how many > versions of things like libgtksomeguicrapthatkeepsmakingabichanges > (all mutually conflicting, and all required by something you *really > need*) we'll end up with if people are easily able to maintain separate > repositories. > I disagree that this is needed, not for any of the usual reasons, but for the simple reason that this functionality already exists. The namespace of an apt repository is its URL, and any information available in a "Release" file at that URL. Now, let's use your example of Ximian. The ftp URL of the Ximian debs you were using was probably: ftp://ftp.ximian.com/pub/debian I imagine the problem you had was that the system had all the Ximian GNOME debs installed, and you wanted to use those from Debian instead. That could have been easily solved by putting the following in /etc/apt/preferences: Package: * Pin: release o=Debian Pin-Priority: 1000 Package: * Pin: origin ftp.ximian.com Pin-Priority: -1 In effect, "Debian packages can force a downgrade of anything, do not consider Ximian packages for installation at all" If we promote the use of third-parties using Release files, they would set the "Origin:" tag to something useful to them, perhaps in Ximian's case "Ximian". All the functionality you want is already there! Scott -- Scott James Remnant Have you ever, ever felt like this? Had strange http://netsplit.com/ things happen? Are you going round the twist?
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