Re: Directory structure at Debian
Ed Down <E.M.Down@city.ac.uk> writes:
> I've been a user of Debian for 6 months or so now - including a sucessfull
> upgrade to 1.2 via ftp and a \HUGE stack of floppies, but I still have
> great problems understanding what all the directories on the ftp sites
> contain.
> Could anyone tell me what the rex-updates and rex-fixed directories are
> for? I would have assumed that any packages with serious bugs would be
> fixed in the standard rex... If not, what is rex still there for with
> 'broken' packages in it? And what happens when you replace your 'rex'
> packages file with the 'rex-fixed' one - Does it tell you you need to
> upgrade all your packages to rex-fixed level?
"rex" is Debian 1.2.0
"rex-updates" contains the packages that were updated between
1.2.0 and 1.2.6
"rex-fixed" contains Debian 1.2.6
So, if you are using floppies, you want to go into rex-updates and get
any packages that are newer than the ones on your system. (There is a
changelog.) (If you are using the internet, just point dselect at the
stable directory.)
> It would seem simpler to me if we just had two directories containing the
> base, x11, non-free, contrib, etc directories: Debian-1.2, which is
> 'fixed' of important bugs as they are cleared and would be used by almost
> every 'user', and Debian-1.2-devel, which contains the most up-do-date
> working release of each package, for use by 'developers'.
There are two directories - one called "stable" and the other called
"unstable". "stable" points to Debian-1.2.6 and "unstable" points to
"bo", the next version of Debian.
There is talk of moving contrib and/or non-free into the stable and
unstable trees (there is good reason for this), but nothing has been
resolved yet.
> Then you install just one of two package.gz files - one for the fixed
> version which changes infrequently, and one for those cutting edge
> Debianites who want the latest of everything. Of course you could also
> install any devel packages individually as needed.
Hmm, I never "install" packages.gz files, so I don't know that the issues
are here. (I have an internet connection, so I just point dselect at a
bunch of directories on the ftp site and it fetches the Package files and
merges them into the Available file.)
Steve
dunham@cps.msu.edu
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