Hi *,=20 I am the maintainer who uploaded that big package and you convinced me=20 that it makes no sense to have something like this in Debian.=20
SUMMARY: You probably do not want to read all this. It is only a bad=20
excuse for wasting Debians bandwidth but I would like to tell you my=20
motivations. Please remove the package from the archive for now - I=20
think it should go in the data section as soon as we have something like=20
that.=20
Thanks
Torsten (ashamed of having uploaded a package that is three times the
size of the former leader)
While I need it at university (because all I do to install software on=20
our clients is to call apt-get on them and I do not want to install anythin=
g=20
by hand onto them) you are very right about a few things:
1. Bloat
The package is 47MB in size and it is not mirrored once but even=20
twice since the source has to be mirrored also.=20
I think we should resolve this by having a data section were=20
we can install just binary packages (e.g. no orig.tar.gz is needed=20
just a reference where to get it).
2. It's available elsewhere
The coastline data is already mirrored worldwide by some 7 servers.
=20
That's right. Problem is that they are not always as fast as Debian=20
servers. In fact I do not like installer packages much because you=20
have to download on installation. I have a ISDN line at home and=20
have to pay like 2$ per hour. I try to circumvent this by=20
downloading everything in university and installing from ZIP at=20
home. This does not work of course if I need to get some data=20
files on configure time for a package.
3. it makes no sense to package it
In fact the costline package consist of only a few files which=20
are installed into the appropriate directory of GMT. While I=20
would never do this for a single machine the situatio is different=20
if I have to install 30 machines with it. Not on the first data
file but when I have a bunch of them.
The Debian packaging system is just so good that I do not want to=20
miss it in keeping our computers up to date. The typical procedure=20
currently is to install the new packages on a single computer, and=20
after everything works I distribute the config files to the server=20
and merge the current package selection of that machine with the=20
previous global package selection.
Then I do dpkg --set-selections on every computer and call=20
apt-get dselect-upgrade. That's really cool and I can always tell=20
where a file comes from.
I also have to say that I was one of the persons who sweared the most when=
=20
somebody actually posted a picture of a van he wanted to let - which was=20
a few megs because he scanned it with high resolution. I never answered=20
to something like that because we was already buried in flames usually=20
but I always sought something like that would not happen to me.
The only reason why I uploaded this into the archive was that I am used=20
to install everything from a CD because getting something over the net=20
is just to expensive. I still think it would be a candidate to be pressed=
=20
on a "fat Debian" distribution.=20
For now please remove it from the distribution
Thanks
Torsten
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