Re: Mirrors et al.
On Mon, 29 Apr 1996, Steven G Bosnick wrote:
> On Mon, 29 Apr 1996, Craig Sanders wrote:
>
> > Who else *needs* a version number for Debian? I don't. I don't
> > care. All I care about is the version numbers of the individual
> > packages I've installed, and I can check those at any time with
> > 'dpkg -l'
>
> I do. I care. When I retrieve packages via FTP I get them over a 2400
> bps modem (no I didn't forget a zero :-). At that speed it is out of
> the question to download every package that changes, I can only get
> important bug fixes by FTP. When I want more than that I buy a CD. The
> problem with not having version numbers is that a given CD may only
> contain a few packages that I don't already have, and those may only
> be bug fixes for packages that I don't use. Not the best way to spend
> my $30. Another problem with not having version numbers relates to
> interdependencies between packages. Debian packages relate to one
> another through 'depends', 'reccomends', 'provides', and 'conflicts'
> as well as through their placement of various files on an installed
> system. Without version numbers, every time I download a new Packages
> file I risks having to download a large number of new packages because
> of changes to dependencies and conflicts (I learned this one the hard
> way).
It's only a name. The name is not the thing.
I don't see how having a version number on the CD will make any
difference to that. It will still have the same files on it regardless
of what it's called...whether it's called Debian 1.2 or Debian 19960622.
The only important version numbers are the version numbers on the
individual packages. Packages don't depend on a specific version of
Debian, they depend on specific versions of other packages. The 'Debian
version number' is purely arbitrary & imaginary, and has NO relationship
at all to package version.
So in your case, instead of buying a CD with Debian 1.x on it and hoping
that the particular upgrades you need are on that CD, you buy a CD
with Debian YYYYMMDD on it. By looking at the announcements in the
debian-changes mailing list, you can easily tell that to upgrade to
version 3.9-2 of package foobar and version 1.2-6 of package barfoo
then you must get a CD which was cut after the date on which they were
released.
It should be a trivial exercise to write some scripts which convert the
debian-changes announcements into a database format...keeping a complete
version history of all packages, and the dates that new versions were
released.
There's much more useful information encoded in a date version number
than there is in an arbitrary Debian Version no.
If you want an up-to-date CD containing everything you can get together
with 10 or 20 local debian users and form a debian users club. As long
as you've got one member who has a good fast net connection (even 28.8K
will do) and doesn't mind mirroring debian you've got it made. If
everyone in your club chips in and buys a CD rom writer, you can make
CD's for the cost of a blank CD whenever you need them. The same thing
could be done if you all had the same or compatible tape drives rather
than a CD rom.
> > Admittedly, the difference between 0.93 and 1.1 is pretty important
> > but after 1.1 is released, the debian version number wont matter at
> > all.
>
> From reading the 'Debian Maintainer's FAQ' I notice that there are
> long range plans for internationalization and for supporting multiple
> architectures. From my experience working for as a software developer
> for a company that went through both of these I would say that these
> have the potential for being as big a change as the aout to ELF
> change.
yeah, but these changes are unlikely to break a machine if installed
incorrectly. The danger with the change from a.out to ELF was that if
the upgrade broke at the wrong point it could leave the system without
any usable shared libraries, or without a usable dynamic linker.
(maybe there should have been a statically linked version of dpkg
available for just this reason! or a debian-recovery disk, which
contained just enough useful stuff to fix a broken system and bring it
back to a bootable state)
> IMHO the solution that the Debian developers have come up with is
> a very good one since it give a lot of flexibility. There are the
> 'stable' and 'unstable' symlinks for people who don't care about
> version numbers, and there are the numbered versions for people (like
> me) who do.
I think that there should still be a stable and and unstable tree.
Every so often (6 months? whenever there are no serious outstanding bugs
in the major packages? whenever?), the symlinks are changed so that
'stable' points to the old development tree, and 'unstable' points to
the new development tree. All packages in unstable would initially be
symlinks to the corresponding file in stable, but would be gradually
replaced by new versions.
hmmm. this gets us back to having code names again for the stable and
unstable directories. no problem. Make the codenames numbers like 0.93
and 1.1 and 1.2 and we'll have a structure which satisfies everyone's
needs :-)
I'm not really against having version numbers for the debian system
itself. I just want the fact that the 'debian version' is arbitrary
and irrelevant highlighted...that it's the package versions which are
the important numbers. The debian package system allows us to look at
the distribution in this way - it's one of the advantages of having a
package system. This is a key advantage over slackware and even redhat.
Craig
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