Proposal, new system for dealing with non-us stuff
Here's an idea for another way to deal with non-us stuff that should be less
error-prone and make it easier to implement some new features.
I would like to see each package include an "Excluded" header listing country
codes the package should be excluded from. The header could be used in several
steps to get packages to the rights places.
some ideas of how to make use of this information:
1) A single control file could contain all the packages and debhelper/dupload
could automatically exclude non-us packages when building on a US build engine
or build them all but segregate the restricted packages and upload them where
they belong.
2) A complete archive could contain all the files, but generate file
excluded.us, excluded.fr, etc. which mirrors could use to exclude the
appropriate files.
3) The US archive could still contain the complete Packages file, but APT
could be made aware of which exclusions each archive follows and choose one
that should have a given package. In fact the US archive could be a complete
mirror except for the files listed in the excluded.us file.
A further refinement might be "virtual domains" like crypto, weak-crypto,
crypto-authentication. Which would avoid problems if new countries ban crypto
or existing ones change their laws.
Maybe this isn't important enough compared to having apt/dselect deal with
source packages, but the current situation just seems awkward and i think we
could do a lot better.
[ I've sent this to debian-policy but Bcc'd debian-devel.
Further discussion should continue on debian-polcy. ]
greg
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