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Re: apt-get wrapper for maintaining Partial Mirrors



On Thursday 18 June 2009 03:17:13 Frank Lin PIAT wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-06-09 at 16:16 -0500, Joseph Rawson wrote:
> > On Tuesday 09 June 2009 13:14:53 sanket agarwal wrote:
> > > I had an idea in mind whereby the task of making mirrors for personal
> > > distributions can be automated.
>
> <lazy-way>
> Depending on what you want to achieve, a caching proxy might be an easy
> solution (there are a specialized in the archive already)
> </lazy-way>
>
Or possibly apt-move called as a post-invoke action of apt-get.

> > > This can be stated as: if a person
> > > wants to keep a customised set of packages for usage with the
> > > distribution, the tool should be able to develop dependencies, fetch
> > > packages, generate appropriate documentation and then create the
> > > corresponding directory structure in the target mirror! The task can
> > > be extended to include packages which are currently not under one of
> > > the standard mirrors!
>
> <lazy-way>
> One don't have to merge the repositories, one can just declare multiple
> sources in /etc/apt/*
> </lazy-way>
>
Then it becomes harder to send the package to the appropriate local 
repository, since they aren't merged.  I would also prefer to not have to 
deal with a merged repository, but keep separate upstream partial mirrors, as 
they would probably be easier to manage.

> > > I think the tool can have immense utility in helping people automate
> > > the task of mantaining the repositories. Suggestions, positive and
> > > negative are invited.
> > >
> > > I have not included the impl details as I would first like to evaluate
> > > the idea at a feasibility and utility level.
>
> If the scope of your project includes being able to bootstrap systems
> from the mirror, resolving dependency is much more complex (some
> packages aren't resolved by dependencies. For instance, the right kernel
> is select by some logic in Debian-installer).
> I found some interesting logic in debian-cd package.
>
> Still, I don't consider that allowing bootstrapping is mandatory. Your
> project would still be extremely valuable without it. [for those 95% of
> the people that install from CD, as opposed to netboot].
>
The reason that I recommended tying germinate and reprepro together with a 
tool was because the original post was discussing "personal distributions".  
To me, this implies the ability to bootstrap, and also the need to have 
a "self building" source/binary repository.

I have just made some other responses to Goswin that should help explain my 
view on things a bit better.

> Regards,
>
> Franklin



-- 
Thanks:
Joseph Rawson

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