Re: empty status
On Sun, Sep 15, 2002 at 05:34:17PM -0600, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
>
> On Sun, 15 Sep 2002, Marc Singer wrote:
>
> > Then it seems ever more peculiar that apt should abort when the file
> > is missing. Why should it care about the status file when it is
> > invoked to download packages?
>
> Basically, it is far better to make people who want to just download
> packages to create an empty status file, than to have errors related to
> messed up systems go unreported.
>
> After all, it isn't very hard to go touch /tmp/foo.
Would you agree to this. Given that any of several files or
directories being missing, the programs should
1) say that there appears to be something wrong. Perhaps the system
has become corrupt.
2) explain what the missing files are and how to correct for them
being missing in case it is not an error.
It does neither. Instead, it says that there is a problem finding one
directory or another. Or, it says it cannot create a lock.
I've reviewed how boot-floppies uses debootstrap to fetch files. As
far as I can tell, there is nothing that debootstrap does that apt
doesn't do better. No, I am not suggesting that we change
boot-floppies.
What would make this straightforward would be an option to apt that
will either prepare a directory to receive package downloads.
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