different binary package versions to minimize download size? (was: #257075, #248351, #284469)

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Florent Rougon <f.rougon@free.fr> wrote:

> Frank Küster <frank@debian.org> wrote:
>
>> The problem is that it _will_ be redownloaded, because the version
>> numbers of all parts change if one subpackage is changed.
>
> Hmmm... this does not seem to be well documented, but it is apparently
> possible (I never tried it myself) to generate from a single source
> package several binary packages, giving each of them a specific version
> number :
>
>   http://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2002/10/msg00111.html

Hm. Sure we don't want to use an epoch as in the quoted mail, and when
we really have different version numbers, we would have to keep
different changelog files - a very tedious, and very error-prone
procedure. 

On the other hand, the problem only exists for users who track unstable
or testing.  While one download of the packages from the tetex-base
source is in fact huge, we don't upload every other day, and I don't
think that it is really relevant compared to the total download volume
of a month if there is one tetex among them.

Therefore, unless there is some half-automatic tool for it, I suggest
not to play with versions.

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer