Re: apt-get wrapper for maintaining Partial Mirrors
On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 02:14:08PM +0200, Bernhard R. Link wrote:
> * Joseph Rawson <umeboshi3@gmail.com> [090619 13:23]:
> > On Friday 19 June 2009 05:09:31 Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
> > > On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 01:52:43AM -0500, Joseph Rawson wrote:
> > > > would be much more interested in making a tool that would make it easier
> > > > to manage local/partial debian mirrors (i.e. one that helped resolve the
> > > > dependencies), rather than have an apt-get wrapper. I also think that
> > > > once such a tool is made, it would make it easier to build an apt-get
> > > > wrapper that works with it. I don't think that viewing the problem with
> > > > an "apt-get wrapper" solution is the best way to approach it, but I do
> > > > think that it would be valuable once the underlying problems are solved.
> > >
> > > And reprepro does not fit the bill because?
> > >
> > It fits part of the bill, as it's an excellent tool for maintaining a
> > repository, but it doesn't resolve dependencies (nor should it).
>
> Actually, I'm quite open to having some depedency handling in reprepro
> and already have written some simple prototype for a related project.
> The problem is that calculating a simple cover of selected packages in
> the dependency graph is not enough:
>
> Usually the cover is not unique but the existance of alternatives in
> dependencies causes multiple solutions. For an initial checkout that
> is no problem, as one can choose one some set by some pseudo-random
> selection (like "packages with alphabetically lower names get the
> first depedency in an alternative tried first" and similar things
> for virtual packages). The problem is that no such criterion can be
> stable against changes in the partially mirrored distribution.
While it's a good queastion, the interface I'm used to use is apt-get /
aptitude. Thus the interface I had in mind is "a list of packages to
install" (in a single installation). Using some tweaking this allows you
to get exactly what you want.
If you want your repository to include conflicting options, you should
allow the interface to include multiple such entries. In our case we had
multiple files. Each file was a list of packages, and each file was
basically a "single apt-get command".
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