dpkg-flop distribution and directory changes

[Erick Branderhorst <branderhorst@fgg.eur.nl>]

This README was sent to debian-private during the mailing-list in
active period so you might haven't seen this earlier. This is about a
very Alpha floppy distribution links creator and directory
changements.

Hi Developer(s),

I'm currently working on a structure to provide a debian floppy based
distribution. Not that a lot of people will download the whole thing
on flops of course. But it is on the wish list for the 1.1 release
(and forwarded to the 1.2 release), so I took the job. For my machine
at home I would like to update the complete development section when
the release is made and I still didn't found the need to buy a cd.

I'm wondering how many floppy formats should be supported (1220, 1440,
perhaps 2880, and 720?). The scripts I wrote up till now can handle
all of them.

The approach is to read the `Packages.gz' file and sort the entries to
their priority level and sections. The package files bigger than 450kb
are split with `dpkg-split' into chunks of 450kb. 

Floppy format wise directories are created (at the level of
binary-i386) named: floppy-i386.1220, floppy-i386.1440,
floppy-i386.2880. In these floppy directories section related
directories are created representing disks with names like: admin-000,
admin-001, base-000, base-001, etc etc. These disk representing
directories contain symbolic links to the packages (if smaller than
450kb) or symbolic links to the packages parts (if bigger than
450kb). A `ls -lL' is included as well (don't know if this is enough).

Currently unstable/floppy-i386.1440 contains approx 103 directories.

A few (important) things are still missing:

- A way to install from floppy (or is this in dselect?). 

- The packages bigger than 450kb aren't available from the archive
yet. There was some discussion a few months ago. A few arguments were
made as pros and cons if packages should be splitted only or not.

pro:
* Dselect and dpkg are able to handle splitted packages very well.
* More reliable ftp download (or less loss) with smaller files.
* A floppy install method can be provided.
* Saves disk space (if only splitted).

con:

* A slightly more difficult manual installation of files. But the
actual difference is just `*' (in most cases). Download
emacs-19.30-1.deb or download emacs-19.30-1.*.deb.
* dftp would break (but that can be fixed).
* dpkg-ftp might break (but that can be fixed too).

A side effect of providing a floppy oriented distribution is that the
directory where binary-i386 (and family) reside is becoming bigger and
bigger. To avoid cluttering up and to provide clearness I suggest that
this structure is changed. Especially with more and more architectures
being provided this will be required any way. I'm sorry for another
rearrangement of the archive but I'm afraid this will required anyway,
so please discuss this before we create a working copy to prepare the
1.2 release.

Current situation            Proposed situation (Isn't implemented yet)

binary -> binary-i386        i386/binary
binary-alpha                 alpha/binary
binary-i386                  i386/binary
binary-m68k                  m68k/binary
binary-sparc                 sparc/binary
disks-alpha                  alpha/disks (?)
disks-i386                   i386/disks
disks-m68k                   m68k/disks (?)
msdos-i386                   i386/msdos
msdos-m68k                   m68k/msdos

new:

binary-all                   all/binary (Architecture independent stuff)

floppy-alpha.1440            alpha/floppy.1440 (?)
floppy-i386.1220             i386/floppy.1220
floppy-i386.1440             i386/floppy.1440
floppy-m68k.1440             m68k/floppy.1440 (?)
floppy-sparc.1440            sparc/floppy.1440 (?)

Erick



--
Erick Branderhorst@heel.fgg.eur.nl +31-10-4635142
Department of General Surgery (Intensive Care) University Hospital Rotterdam NL