Bug#481129: Bug#671503: general: APT repository format is not documented

["Eugene V. Lyubimkin" <jackyf@debian.org>]

Hello,

On 2012-05-17 13:48, Michal Suchanek wrote:
> Admittedly there is no text in social contract about using
> Debian-proprietary formats. And a format only defined by "apt can read
> that" is definitely Debian-proprietary there is no better term for that.
> 
> I'd say it's slightly discriminatory against software not part of Debian
> that cannot rely on getting notified when "apt can read that" silently
> changes, there is no document defining what apt should be able to read
> that software authors can rely on to interoperate with apt, one of the
> core Debian tools. Apt in turn relies on open standards like HTTP and
> FTP to interoperate with the rest of the world.

As someone who had to reverse-engineer APT repository format I fully
agree with the above. With one minor addition that some software which
is (non-core) part of Debian suffer from the same problem.

-- 
Eugene V. Lyubimkin aka JackYF, JID: jackyf.devel(maildog)gmail.com
C++/Perl developer, Debian Developer