On Sat, Sep 22, 2001 at 04:44:46PM +0200, Admar Schoonen wrote: > On Fri, Sep 21, 2001 at 05:15:31PM -0400, Matt Zimmerman wrote: > > madison requires connectivity to a Debian database which is not publicly > > accessible, so it is only useful on a couple of internal Debian > > machines. For this reason, it probably isn't worthwhile to package it. > > I think it can be useful for those who want to create their own flavour of > Debian or want to (partially) mirror Debian. > dpkg-scanpackages/apt-ftparchive doesn't work very well for packages which > are located in the pool, and the only way to generate correct packagelists > is to put all information from all packages in a database and query that > database when packagelists are generated; thus people who want to > partially mirror or create their own Debian-flavour should create their > own Debian database from information gathered from packagelists which are > downloaded by apt.
There's no need for a database unless you want to maintain multiple distributions out of cross-sections of the pool, as Debian does. If you only want to make a single set of packages available, or you only have one version of each package, then you don't need to worry about it. apt-ftparchive and dpkg-scanpackages will work fine. It doesn't matter how the files are arranged (in a pool-like hierarchy or section hierarchy or a flat directory). If you want to create your own flavour that contains different versions of certain packages, or excludes certain packages, the situation is the same, just with a different set of packages. Partial mirrors should use the Packages files on the mirrors to decide which files need to be downloaded. Or is there a different goal you're describing that I don't understand? -- - mdz
