Re: Moving contrib and non-free of master.debian.org

[Bruce Sass <bsass@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca>]

The status file is on all Debian systems (those that use dpkg anyways),
the field within the DPKG DB that contains the information which
indicates main/contrib/non-free is not usually packaged within the .deb
file itself... it is found in the Packages files on the ftp sites.

Also, unless one has installed the main Packages file (automatically via
dselect/apt or by manually downloading Packages and calling it
/var/lib/dpkg/available), you don't have the DFSG status of the packages
included in the base installation (from floppies at least).


- Bruce

-- 
On Mon, 28 Jun 1999, Adam Heath wrote:

> On Mon, 28 Jun 1999, Bruce Sass wrote:
> 
> > These methods only work reliably if one uses dselect or apt.
> > 
> > The philosophical/political/religious status of Debian packages is
> > usually only found in the Packages files, those of us who don't use the
> > package fetching tools (too much overhead for me) do not have this
> > information handy unless we specifically went and downloaded the
> > Packages files.
> > 
> > So... until Debian makes the "status" field required (as in included in
> > the .deb) or someone rewrites VRMS to prompt for a CD or to actually go
> > looking for Packages files on the 'net...
> > 
> > Hmmm, 
> > does VRMS report when it can not determine the status of a package.
> 
> Um, very wrong.
> 
> /var/lib/dpkg/status is on ALL debian systems, no matter what.  It contains
> the status of currently installed pkgs.  dpkg-awk and grep-status parse this
> file.
> 
> Adam
> 
> ps: On a side note, dpkg-awk can parse any dpkg database file, including the
> available file, and the package file.
> 
> 
> 
> 


later,

	Bruce