Re: Data does NOT belong in Debian (was: Stop Archive bloat)
On 19 Oct 1999, eichin@thok.org (Mark W. Eichin) wrote:
> Ports has probably advanced, you'd really want * set of mirrors
> (multiple or pattern URLs) * md5sum for exact match, but
> easy-to-upgrade option
The FreeBSD users that I know like the ports system very much. It's
pretty slick.
> The problem is that if a data set evolves independently of/faster than
> our release cycle, a package-by-reference in "stable" will eventually
> lose. Value-add point for cd distributors, I guess :-)
Well, to prevent the deterioration of this information, the obvious
solution is not to provide such information in a package. Instead, it
should be available over the net (at our ftp site or something) and
constantly updated to reflect changes in the data sets. This is similar
in concept to our Packages file, but it refers to resources that are
available over the entire Internet instead of just the packages in our
distribution. Personally, I think this is better and more dynamic
than grabbing the data, packaging it, and letting it grow stale and
out-of-date until our next stable release.
For those getting this data on a CDROM, the CDROM could be equipped with
such a file that lists every data set (or document) on the disc. This
is a nice way to catalog numerous data sets on a CD. If we implement
this well, we will have a general utility, which could be useful on any
Unix-like system, not just Debian.
Brian
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