Re: reducing the number of (user visible) packages

[Goswin von Brederlow <brederlo@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de>]

Adrian 'Dagurashibanipal' von Bidder <avbidder@fortytwo.ch> writes:

> On Saturday 27 November 2004 00.11, Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
>> Adrian 'Dagurashibanipal' von Bidder <avbidder@fortytwo.ch> writes:
>
>> > Proposal: split packages into 'conventional' debs and support debs.
>
>> - existing dpkg/apt/aptitude/dselect has to keep working so we need a
>>   full Packages file
>
> Not sure about that.
>
> One of the benefits of support packages would be that the Packages file 
> could be smaller - since support packages are very tightly coupled to their 
> 'mother packages', there may not even be a need for any file where all 
> support packages are listed - just throw them in the pool.
>
> Obviously, this would require a double release cycle to introduce them 
> (until oldstable's packaging tools know about this), so maybe a transition 
> could be listing them in the Packages file.
>
> (Perhaps the modification could be as small as allowing multiple 'Filename' 
> entries in the Packages file? I don't know enough about the details of how 
> packages flow through Debain to know if that could be a solution, though.)

That would certainly break a lot of tools. So a 2 cycle delay again.

In the long run (2 releases, 4-6 years) I like your idea. But till
then (and even then it would be usefull) the sorted file or diffs can
do great work.

Also, instead of multiple Filename (and md5sum and size) fields I
would use the same syntax Sources files use with Files containing
md5sum, size and name of each.

And the installed size should change to include the support debs.

> cheers
> -- vbi
>
> -- 
> TODO: apt-get install signify

MfG
        Goswin