making recompiled packages available
We are recompiling a bunch of packages to optimise them for i686. The setup is along the following lines:
1. A copy of all six source and binary cdroms is on the hard disk
2. A local repository is at /debian/dists
3. sources.list has source and binary entries for the local repository and the cd's
4. sources.list has source entries for debian mirrors
5. apt-move.conf targets the local repository and mirrors only sources
The following commands are used to maintain the source mirror:
$ apt-get update # update the list of available sources
$ apt-move sync # retrieve any new sources
These seem to work well enough, although it is necessary to do a dselect/update before the downloaded sources will be retrieved from the repository instead of from the proxy cache. :-/
Having installed and configured pentium-builder for i686, the following command will do a nice job for any source whose build-dependencis are met:
$ apt-get -b source <package>
So now we have the following problems:
A. The following command should add the recompiled binary packages to the repository:
$ apt-move movefile *.deb
But it only works some of the time -- many of the deb packages are skipped and left where they are, and if there is already a matching deb file in the repository, the new one is put in /debian/.archive... which seems to be some kind of bit bucket?
B. The locally compiled packages are not recognised by dselect. We have read lots of documentation (but I suspect not all), and issued every kind of refresh or update commmand that is mentioned.
So far, the only way that we have found to use the recompiled packages is with "dpkg -i *.deb" which is tedious and error prone to say the least.
BTW, is there any way to analyse build dependencies automatically, the way dselect and friends can analyse install dependencies?
All in all, Debian is a fantastic system to use, and we would appreciate any help or advice as to how to use it better. I am not sure if we are doing something wrong, or trying to make apt do something it is not quite ready to do yet.
Finally, are there already any i686 optimised mirrors available? If not, is there some economical way that we could make ours available to the community. Haven't been with Debian long enough to now if this fits in with policy or not.
Cheers,
Andrew
PS Can send config files to anyone who wants them for use or further analysis.
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