Bug#914282: O: multistrap -- multiple repository bootstrap based on apt
Package: wnpp
Severity: normal
I intend to orphan the multistrap package.
The package description is:
A debootstrap replacement with multiple repository support,
using apt to handle all dependency issues and conflicts.
.
Multistrap includes support for native and foreign architecture
bootstrap environments. Foreign bootstraps only need minimal
configuration on the final device. Also supports cleaning up the
generated bootstrap filesystem to remove downloaded packages and
hooks to modify the files in the bootstrap filesystem after the
packages have been unpacked but before being configured.
.
Unlike debootstrap, multistrap relies on working versions of
dpkg and apt outside the final filesystem. If dpkg supports
MultiArch, foreign architecture libraries can be installed,
where available.
I took over multistrap maintainership in 2016 because it provides many
advantages over debootstrap because it uses apt as a backend. This in
turn allows multiple repositories, resolution of complex dependencies
and installing foreign architecture packages.
Unfortunately I was never very happy with the codebase which led me to a
big 1500-line-diff rewrite of the codebase:
https://gitlab.mister-muffin.de/josch/multistrap/commit/ff96767b2f6a574e2651768225ad61557880e12f
Followed by a 1842-line-diff commit which even more restructured the
codebase:
https://gitlab.mister-muffin.de/josch/multistrap/commit/cd5dfbbbf2435bae8fc34ac32ee7d716c24bada8
But I still wasn't happy and realized that to make myself happy, I would
have to change behaviour of multistrap that would make its interface
incompatible with earlier versions.
In the end, I ended up with a complete rewrite and out came my package
mmdebstrap:
https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/mmdebstrap
Similar to multistrap it uses apt at its core but in contrast to
multistrap it doesn't offer a configuration file system.
Unfortunately I'm very happy with mmdebstrap and thus I now decided to
not spend more time into multistrap. I did a last upload that fixes a
FTBFS issue and its last outstanding RC bug but after that it's now
orphaned.
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