On Sun, 10 Dec 1995, Richard Kettlewell wrote: > >On Fri, 8 Dec 1995, Bruce Perens wrote: > >>We can't put stuff like this where just anybody can download it any > >>longer. Especially, we can't do that and call it "1.0". This isn't > >>entirely Infomagic's fault, in my opinion. > >[...] > As I understand it, mirrors have some trouble with directories > changing names; so what we really want is a solution that keeps > directory names fixed. The suggestion below suffers here in that when > 1.0 is declared to be released, the directory has to change name from > not-released-1.0 to release-1.0. > > This could be solved with a symlink, obviously, but that still leaves > a directory called `not-released-1.0' containing released software, > which may be felt to be suboptimal.
I was thinking about this last night. It seems to me that the root of the problem is that we have directory trees containing multiple distributions, have given those directories meaningful names, and those meaningful names have been taken by some people to to have different meanings than the meaning intended by the namer. Superseding those meaningful names with other names (which still have the possibility of being misinterpreted) causes massive re-mirroring. It seems to me that a solution might be to put our real directory trees in a hidden subdirectory with a neutral name, to name those trees neutrally, and then to have meaningfully named (and easily changed) symlinks pointing to them: Something like: /debian/.hidden/debian-tree1/ # full 0.093 tree /debian/.hidden/debian-tree2/ # full 1.1 tree /debian-stable -> /debian/.hidden/debian-tree1 /debian-unstable -> /debian/.hidden/debian-tree2 /debian-0.93 -> /debian/.hidden/debian-tree1 /debian-1.1.alpha -> /debian/.hidden/debian-tree2 Then, when 1.0 becomes the stable distribution, the symlinks could change to: /debian-stable -> /debian/.hidden/debian-tree2 /debian-devel -> /debian/.hidden/debian-tree2 /debian-0.93 -> /debian/.hidden/debian-tree1 # might be deleted /debian-1.1 -> /debian/.hidden/debian-tree2 Once a debian/.hidden/treeN tree is established, it should not be renamed.
