Bug#33049: Apt could handle half-way-mirrored mirror sites better
package: apt
version: 0.1.10
severity: wishlist
Hi,
I have a request for the enhancement of the great program called Apt. I
have been using the 'apt' method for dselect for quite a long time now and
there is one thing I think could be better handled. It's mirror sites that
are not quite in sync with the main archive.
There are a few mirror sites in my country to which I have faster access
than to ftp.debian.org, so my sources.list looks like this (yes, I have a
local mirror of non-us and I am following potato almost day-to-day):
deb ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/Debian potato main contrib non-free
deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian potato main contrib non-free
deb file:/home/ftp/pub/debian/debian-non-US potato/binary-$(ARCH)/
deb ftp://nonus.debian.org/debian potato main contrib non-free non-US
deb ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/Debian slink main contrib non-free
deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian slink main contrib non-free
deb file:/home/ftp/pub/debian/debian-non-US slink/binary-$(ARCH)/
deb ftp://nonus.debian.org/debian slink non-US
Now, it happens a lot that ftp.nluug.nl has mirrored the latest Packages
file but not the newest .deb files. Most of the time it takes a day or two
before every package I want to upgrade has found its way to the mirror. In
the mean time, apt refuses to upgrade any of the already-downloaded
packages. I can call dpkg to install them, but that is of course a
suboptimal solution.
I would like apt to be extended like this:
- If a new package is to be installed, or an installed package is to be
upgraded,
1 try to download the latest version from the first site in sources.list
that carries the latest version of the package
2 if that fails, try to download the package from the next site that has
that version of the package
3 if that fails and there are more sites that carry the same version of
the package, go to 2
4 if the package still hasn't been found, fail this package like the
current apt does
That way, I could have a mirror site which is 'close' to me at the top of
sources.list, although it isn't always in sync with master. Second would
be a site which is somewhat further away, etc. etc. And ftp.debian.org
would be the last in the list because that site is assumed to be always
in sync.
If I have been unclear in any way, please contact me.
Remco
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