[maemo-developers] maemo-developers Digest, Vol 59, Issue 25

[From: Jeremiah Foster]

On Mar 26, 2010, at 3:00 PM, Marius Vollmer wrote:

> ext Jeremiah Foster <jeremiah at jeremiahfoster.com> writes:
> 
>> One huge issue with the repository is the tool used on the backend:
>> apt-ftparchiver. This tool cannot automatically remove debs and source
>> packages, causing huge disk bloat (some packages have four or five versions
>> sitting on the repos.)
> 
> I think apt-ftparchive is not supposed to do this, it only creates the
> indices.  Or in other words, it does not install files into the repo, so
> why should it remove them?

Good point. I should have been clearer in contrasting the two tools - reprepro can monitoring "incoming" directories and automatically remove older versions of debs and/or source packages, keeping the repository lean and mostly free from bloat. 
> 
>> I have tried to fix this by installing a set up for reprepro - a state of the
>> art repository management system.
> 
> Reprepro is certainly nice, I had some good experience with it in the
> past.  I hear it can generate .pdiffs now etc.
> 
>> This work has been largely ignored by the Nokia team running the
>> repos, much to my frustration.
> 
> Yes, Nokia is good at that. ;-)

Nokia is not alone. We'll soon get to see how the Intel / Nokia combo is at ignoring the community.  :-)
> 
>> The danger is of creating a fork of the APT process. Using upstream
>> tools would probably be wise - your work would help everyone.
> 
> Yes, I will be careful.  The changes will be source compatible, minimal,
> and hopefully well isolated.  If you are interested, please check out
> the debexec.patch.

Heh - now I have to send patches or shut up. 

>  And we are only in this for the short run, MeeGo
> will kick this all into the bucket anyway.

Indeed.

>>    Then we should remove the bars and locks.  Tearing down the whole house
>>    and going back up the trees would be overreacting quite a bit, no?
>> 
>> You'll need to allow the community to have more say on how the server
>> infrastructure is run. Currently you need an NDA, proprietary tools
>> are used, and access is strictly limited. This is the opposite of open
>> source.
> 
> Sounds bad indeed.

I don't mean to be too critical, there has to be some line between utter chaos and someone taking responsibility. I do think that having a more team oriented server admin process would be good, but I appear to be alone in my views.

Jeremiah