I think that's correct. While the Contents files are optional; if the Release file advertises
them, they better be there.
Partial mirroring is simply not supported - if you advertise it, ship it. I mean, the same
applies to architectures or sections: If they're not mirrored, but enabled on a client,
they will fail as well
...
Ok thanks that's clarified things a lot.
I guess if I don't want to mirror the contents file I would have to edit the InRelease file which would break the signatures I guess.
The option that marks the contents as missing also lets me handle this nicely.
Ideally this could be added to the repository definition wiki and or perhaps apt's error message could say file defined in InRelease file is not present.
Perhaps change but report into a wish list or something?
Andrew