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Bug#671503: marked as done (document APT repository format)

Your message dated Fri, 11 Aug 2017 12:44:51 -0700
with message-id <87o9rlx51o.fsf@iris.silentflame.com>
and subject line Closing inactive Policy bugs
has caused the Debian Bug report #671503,
regarding document APT repository format
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

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-- 
671503: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=671503
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact owner@bugs.debian.org with problems
--- Begin Message --- 
Package: general
Severity: important

Hello,

I wanted to create a repository of my own packages so that I can use the
standard Debian tools to install these packages and resolve any
dependencies automatically.

However, there is no documentation of the format of these repositories.

There are multiple tools dealing with these.

apt (apt-get) downloads packages, and indirectly through apt libraries
aptitude and other tools do also.

dpkg-scanpackages and apt-ftparchive are supposed aids in creating such
repositories apt can download from.

The man pages of neither apt-get nor dpkg-scanpackages nor
apt-ftparchive document the repository format.

By reverse-engineering a Debian mirror site I managed to write a script
using dpkg-scanpackages that created a repository that apt could use.

Unfortunately, the undocumented format of apt archives has changed and I
had to reverse-engineer a Debian mirror again to figure out what has
changed.

After reporting this as a bug it was recommended that I use
apt-ftparchive instead so that I don't have to deal with the details of
this undocumented format myself.

Alas, what I feared was true.

dpkg-scanpackages is a simplistic tool so it is possible to use its
output even in the face of lack of documentation.

This, however, does not apply the apt-ftparchive. It is supposed to
create the required files fully automatically. With the provided
documentation I was able to make it do exactly nothing, fully
automatically.

I would appreciate if Debian fully decumented its core tools like
package manager.

Thanks

Michal

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (900, 'stable'), (500, 'testing'), (410, 'unstable'), (200, 'experimental'), (111, 'oldstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-2-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored: LC_ALL set to en_US.UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message --- 
control: user debian-policy@packages.debian.org
control: usertag -1 +obsolete
control: tag -1 +wontfix

Russ Allbery and I did a round of in-person bug triage at DebConf17 and
we are closing this bug as inactive.

The reasons for closing fall into the following categories, from most
frequent to least frequent:

- issue is appropriate for Policy, there is a consensus on how to fix
  the problem, but preparing the patch is very time-consuming and no-one
  has volunteered to do it, and we do not judge the issue to be
  important enough to keep an open bug around;

- issue is appropriate for Policy but there does not yet exist a
  consensus on what should change, and no recent discussion.  A fresh
  discussion might allow us to reach consensus, and the messages in the
  old bug are unlikely to help very much; or

- issue is not appropriate for Policy.

If you feel this bug is still relevant and want to restart the
discussion, you can re-open the bug.  However, please consider instead
opening a new bug with a message that summarises and condenses the
previous discussion, updates the report for the current state of Debian,
and makes clear exactly what you think should change.

A lot of these old bugs have long side tangents and numerous messages,
and that old discussion is not necessarily helpful for figuring out what
Debian Policy should say today.

-- 
Sean Whitton

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