Re: Data does NOT belong in Debian (was: Stop Archive bloat)

1999-10-20 Thread Torsten Landschoff 
On Tue, Oct 19, 1999 at 09:43:57PM +0200, Goswin Brederlow wrote:
 
> Why not allow Source only packages ?

That will win nothing. You can't use apt-get on them, have to rebuilt 
and have them twice locally. 

cu
Torsten

Re: Data does NOT belong in Debian (was: Stop Archive bloat)

1999-10-20 Thread Anthony Towns 
On Tue, Oct 19, 1999 at 11:00:14PM +0200, Torsten Landschoff wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 19, 1999 at 09:43:57PM +0200, Goswin Brederlow wrote:
> > Why not allow Source only packages ?
> That will win nothing. You can't use apt-get on them, have to rebuilt 
> and have them twice locally. 

$ apt-get source -b foo   # to get source and build

There isn't a `get source, build and install' option afaik; and
build-depends aren't implemented yet; but still.

There's no reason why you can't store just the rebuilt .deb or just
the source locally, either, afaict.

Cheers,
aj

-- 
Anthony Towns <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
I don't speak for anyone save myself. PGP encrypted mail preferred.

 ``The thing is: trying to be too generic is EVIL. It's stupid, it 
results in slower code, and it results in more bugs.''
-- Linus Torvalds


pgpjqvIf94QG1.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Data does NOT belong in Debian (was: Stop Archive bloat)

1999-10-20 Thread Julian Gilbey 
> Philippe Troin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
> >   1) The way the Debian archive works requires the data to be stored
> >  twice (source package and .deb).
> 
> Why not allow Source only packages ?

Or have a small .deb which installs the data and the data as a
tar.gz/tar.bz2 file which is symlinked from source or something like
that?

   Julian

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

  Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, QMW, Univ. of London. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Debian GNU/Linux Developer,  see http://www.debian.org/~jdg

Re: Data does NOT belong in Debian (was: Stop Archive bloat)

1999-10-20 Thread Fabien Ninoles 
On Tue, Oct 19, 1999 at 11:37:06PM +0200, Petr Cech wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 19, 1999 at 07:10:09PM + , Zygo Blaxell wrote:
> > On 18 Oct 1999 18:16:58 -0700, Philippe Troin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> [snip]
> > >  3) Where do we stop ? As someone says, there's nothing preventing
> > > me from uploading as debian package every single .wav or .mov
> > > file on the Internet just because it's useful.
> > 
> > This is the real problem.  Some things just don't belong in Debian,
> > even though they legally and technically can be distributed via Debian.

See more discussion on the policy proposal of the data section (accessible
via the BTS ;). The Debian Policy don't try to resolve abuse of the system.
We are mature enough to detect such abuse (new 3GB package will have to
go by ftp-maintainers who I hope aren't foul enough to let it install in
the archives !) and discuss if we can accept or not such package.

The proposal also deal with contents: anything dfsg. It not says that
we must accept anything! In fact, I never like the fact that the policy
should take some judgement value. The only one that I explicitely with,
as all the developpers, is the DFSG. No other constraint except from a
legal point of view (which is implicit to our society).

Take also in note that the data is just a first step. Nothing forbid us
to granulate data in text, doc, themes, etc... and make them mirrored
separately on different site just like non-us (eh! no body has to mirror
non-free or experimental or Incoming, why forcing people to mirror data
now?). Because packages in main or contrib can't depends over packages
in data, data is really optionnal and can be handled independently.
Data CDs can be build and registered in apt like a seperate secondary
source. apt should install packages in the Official CDs first (including
vendors add-on) and after that asking for the other Data CDs. Currently,
there are no support for this in apt but I don't is so much trouble to
add some. It's nothing complicated like the dependencies of the current
CD-chains. Two steps: Do Officials Set first, then do Data Set(s) in
independant order.

I'm one of the proposer of data. The original one was titled "let
Debian blow gracefully" and was meant to let people have choice. Choice
to not mirror everything, choice to have access to data useful for them,
choice to have a good set of data they know they can use freely (in dfsg
sense). Personnaly, I always tick to the copyright of the eterm-backgrounds.
They came from the digitalblasphemy site and lot of them are now only
accessible to members... but that's another story. The proposal accepted
still repeat this: No constraint except two things: DFSG and Independance
over main.

> > 
> > >This is what I believe are acceptable "pure data" packages:
> > >  1) Data which is absolutely required for a program to work.

This should not go in data! See the proposal for that!

> > 
> > Hmmm...what about theme packages for desktops?  Will Debian allow packages
> > of sound files, icons, patterns, and color selections for GNOME etc?
> 
> they are already there: gnome-audio(3MB), eterm-backgrounds (8MB) and propably
> some other (not to mention the infamous gmt- packages)
> 
> > >  3) Documentation (documentation packages should still remain).
> > 
> > Make that "documentation for other non-data packages in Debian."
> > 
> > What happens when people start releasing packages with MPEG format
> > training videos instead of text documentation?
> 
> yuck.
> 
> > >  4) Small examples or data sets.
> > 
> > "Illustrative" examples might be a better term.  "Small" is ill-defined;
> > a "small" MPEG-2 example file might be dozens of megabytes.
> 
> :)
> 
> > >Pros of this policy:
> > >  1) Makes Debian smaller.

Data proposal let main be smaller than even now (by let it remove some
themes, lg issues, some special formatted docs, extra packages, etc),
while still offering choice to people who want the big set. It also
let the mirrors choose between mirroring a Small and Lean Debian, or
a Big and Ressourceful Debian. Currently, there no easy to do that
(you would have to distinguish between standard packages and extra/optional
one). All that without restreigning Debian in any way.

> > >  2) Avoids controversial materials (politics and religious texts)
> > 
> > I can see it now...
> > 
> > "Debian bans the bible but keeps all the foul language in the xscreensaver
> > sources.  What has this world come to?  Somebody, think of the children!"
> > 
> > ;-)

Yes, and all the nudes in eterms-backgrounds too [ trust me, I have to remove
it from my backgrounds at a previous jobs !! ]. Remember: people at Debian
have only three contraint: the Constitution, the DFSG Policy, and the Law.
This include the opinion of developpers as a whole and the will of the
maintainer of a package. We have to deal with both in a reasonable way.

> > 
> > >Cons:
> > >  1) People which don't have access to the net find these packages
> > > i

Re: CPU specific binaries

1999-10-20 Thread Colin Walters 
On Wed, Oct 20, 1999 at 02:34:43PM +1000, Glenn McGrath wrote:
> Archive bloat i thought debian was about giving the user the choice of
> what they wanted rather them presenting them with subset of whats available.
> I feel silly even sugesting this, but why not have official binaries for
> other cpu's, its the only way they would get widespread use.
> Possible reasons
> 1) Archive bloat
> Storage is cheap ($22 per GB where  i am), mirrors should be able to handle
> this, thats what there all about.
> CD's are cheap, a coupla dollars
> 
> 2) Bandwidth of mirrors
> Mirrors could JUST mirror the 386 packages if they didnt consider others
> worthy, its there choice

You are missing the point.  The 48MB coastline data file is just the beginning,
if we continue to allow packges of unlimited size and limited general utility.
What happens when I decide to upload a package of 10 2-hour long Linux training
videos I made in MPEG format?  Well, everyone has to buy another disk.  Are
you volunteering, becuase disk space is _so_ cheap? 

Again, the problem isn't how little disk space we have.  The problem is the
increasingly low utility/size ratio of many packages.

-- 
Colin Walters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://web.verbum.org/levanti
PGP Fingerprint: A580 5AA1 0887 2032 7EFB  19F4 9776 6282 C207 843A

Re: Data does NOT belong in Debian (was: Stop Archive bloat)

1999-10-20 Thread Gerhard Poul 
Hi,

> NO!!  RFCs are *very* important when writing software.  They are the
> standards upon which a large amount of free software is based and are
> absolutely crucial to developers.  Why should they have to hunt the
> web for such stuff?

I think it's possible for _everyone_ to mirror (for example)
http://www.rfc-editor.org/categories/rfc-standard.html on his computer if he
wants these things.

There are also other ways to do it. (e.g. I have written a few scripts which
make it possible to keep a local 'cache' of rfc documents and if I need one
which is not in there it gets automatically fetched.)

I think everyone is able to find a solution for these day-to-day tasks.
These are not the problem a distribution should cover.

regards,
  gerhard

Re: Data does NOT belong in Debian (was: Stop Archive bloat)

1999-10-20 Thread Zygo Blaxell 
On Wed, 20 Oct 1999 14:06:50 +1000, Anthony Towns  
wrote:
>On Tue, Oct 19, 1999 at 11:00:14PM +0200, Torsten Landschoff wrote:
>> On Tue, Oct 19, 1999 at 09:43:57PM +0200, Goswin Brederlow wrote:
>> > Why not allow Source only packages ?
>> That will win nothing. You can't use apt-get on them, have to rebuilt=20
>> and have them twice locally.=20
>
>$ apt-get source -b foo   # to get source and build
>
>There isn't a `get source, build and install' option afaik; and
>build-depends aren't implemented yet; but still.

For "pure data" packages, per-package build dependencies are mostly
irrelevant--virtually all of them would be satisfied by gunzip, tar,
anything providing /bin/sh, fileutils, and make, and last time I checked
the only package in that list that isn't already Essential is make.

Here's a proposal:  Maintainers could have the option of not uploading a
..deb at all if their packages do not have build dependencies other than
the above, and apt could be taught that if it has a deb-src for a binary
package but can't find the binary package itself, it should automatically
try to do 'apt-get source -b' on the sources in a temporary directory
somewhere, then add all such generated .deb files to its sources lists.
For completeness apt would also have to know about removing the .deb files
once they are installed, or for simplicity apt could just remove the .deb
files whenever it does a 'clean'.  The sources could be deleted as soon as
the .deb's are generated.

Alternatively, one could define a new rule for debian/rules which,
instead of building a .deb package, builds and installs from sources
directly onto the local system instead.  A helper application for dpkg
could take care of the sometimes messy details of updating the package
files database, creating directory structures and moving (not copying
unless there's a cross-device rename happening) files around with all
the necessary error unwinding.

>There's no reason why you can't store just the rebuilt .deb or just
>the source locally, either, afaict.

Build the source package under /var/cache/apt somewhere, and have apt 
clean up the mess with 'apt-get clean'.

Re: Data does NOT belong in Debian (was: Stop Archive bloat)

1999-10-20 Thread Julian Gilbey 
> Hi,
> 
> > NO!!  RFCs are *very* important when writing software.  They are the
> > standards upon which a large amount of free software is based and are
> > absolutely crucial to developers.  Why should they have to hunt the
> > web for such stuff?
> 
> I think it's possible for _everyone_ to mirror (for example)
> http://www.rfc-editor.org/categories/rfc-standard.html on his computer if he
> wants these things.
> 
> There are also other ways to do it. (e.g. I have written a few scripts which
> make it possible to keep a local 'cache' of rfc documents and if I need one
> which is not in there it gets automatically fetched.)
> 
> I think everyone is able to find a solution for these day-to-day tasks.
> These are not the problem a distribution should cover.

Such scripts would be a very useful addition to the archive.

Also, you have to realise that not everyone has a decent (or cheap)
net connection, and looking through dozens of RFCs can take a long
time if they are not locally available.

There is a huge amount of stuff which is easy to
download/mirror/whatever, but one of the nice things about Debian is
that important things are available as standard on the CDs of the
distribution.  I personally regard RFCs as generally important to
anyone programming any net-aware or net-related software.

   Julian

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

  Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, QMW, Univ. of London. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Debian GNU/Linux Developer,  see http://www.debian.org/~jdg

Re: Data does NOT belong in Debian (was: Stop Archive bloat)

1999-10-20 Thread Christian Surchi 
On 19-Oct-99 Torsten Landschoff wrote:

> That will win nothing. You can't use apt-get on them, have to rebuilt 
> and have them twice locally. 

Yes, but the problem is the mirrors space, not the space on users disks.

---
   Christian Surchi, [EMAIL PROTECTED], www.firenze.linux.it/~csurchi
  PGP fingerprint = 05 CE 0B BE BF FC B6 14  53 CA C7 8E AE 3A F2 6A
  GPG fingerprint = D1E2 9A9D 1712 0E94 8671  834E 0CFF 30E1 2625 7B68

Re: Data does NOT belong in Debian (was: Stop Archive bloat)

1999-10-20 Thread Christian Surchi 
On 19-Oct-99 Goswin Brederlow wrote:

> Why not allow Source only packages ?

And use apt-get source.

---
   Christian Surchi, [EMAIL PROTECTED], www.firenze.linux.it/~csurchi
  PGP fingerprint = 05 CE 0B BE BF FC B6 14  53 CA C7 8E AE 3A F2 6A
  GPG fingerprint = D1E2 9A9D 1712 0E94 8671  834E 0CFF 30E1 2625 7B68

You are going to have a new love affair.

digest version of debian-project?

1999-10-20 Thread Alexander Koch 
Hi.

Is a digest version of this list wanted? Or do we want to wait
a couple of weeks before we do anything? I think we rather wait
a bit... the number of the project subscribers is 10 times the
number of the project subscribers, not counting the digest
version.

Alexander

Re: Data does NOT belong in Debian (was: Stop Archive bloat)

1999-10-20 Thread Goswin Brederlow 
Torsten Landschoff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> On Tue, Oct 19, 1999 at 09:43:57PM +0200, Goswin Brederlow wrote:
>  
> > Why not allow Source only packages ?
> 
> That will win nothing. You can't use apt-get on them, have to rebuilt 
> and have them twice locally. 

You could set the arch flag in the packages file to "source-only". Apt 
could then run "apt-get source" and the source be dowloaded. Then it
can be compiled or directly installed.

Its only data, there is actually no need to compile anything and dpkg
could be told to install from a source and debian dir directly. Even
if it has to be compiled, so what. People without a few MB space won´t 
download 47 MB packages.

After installation the source and deb file can be deleted and
everything is fine again.

May the Source be with you.
Goswin

PS: Its just a dream to only have to mirror source to install and
maintain a debian system at the moment, but we´r getting nearer with
the autobuild demons.