Bug#447411: openoffice.org: OOo upload size almost overloads Debian infrastructure
Package: openoffice.org
Severity: important
Currently the openoffice.org packages are all built from a
single giant source package. This means that any change to any
part of the suite will cause new versions of all openoffice.org
binary packages for all architectures. That is more than 1
Gigabyte of files being pushed through the upload and mirror
systems, including every public or private Debian mirror.
While the official Debian mirror network seems not to have
buckled under this presure yet, the load is still extreme,
unnecessary and likely to cause problems for users or
administrators. I myself became aware of it when the size of my
private Debian mirror exceeded the disk size and the directory
pool/main/openoffice.org turned out to be the biggest one by
far.
To correct this situation, I strongly suggest that the
openoffice.org source package be split into multiple source
packages such that any one change to the suite (upstream or
Debian specific) is unlikely to affect more than a few source
and binary packages. Figuring out an efficient split requires
detailed knowledge of the OOo source code structure and what
parts usually changes at the same time, so is best done by the
package maintainers.
As a historical precedent, look at the history of the X
packages: Before the current X.org based modular packaging, all
the X packages were built from a single large source package and
on Sep 19, 2005, a single X security update overloaded the
security.debian.org server due to the bandwidth needed. And
those X packages were smaller than the current openoffice.org
package set. See
http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/debian-security-announce-2005/msg00206.html
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.21jbj3.4-21
Locale: LANG=en_DK.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_DK.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
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