Package: general Severity: important Hello,
I wanted to create a repository of my own packages so that I can use the standard Debian tools to install these packages and resolve any dependencies automatically. However, there is no documentation of the format of these repositories. There are multiple tools dealing with these. apt (apt-get) downloads packages, and indirectly through apt libraries aptitude and other tools do also. dpkg-scanpackages and apt-ftparchive are supposed aids in creating such repositories apt can download from. The man pages of neither apt-get nor dpkg-scanpackages nor apt-ftparchive document the repository format. By reverse-engineering a Debian mirror site I managed to write a script using dpkg-scanpackages that created a repository that apt could use. Unfortunately, the undocumented format of apt archives has changed and I had to reverse-engineer a Debian mirror again to figure out what has changed. After reporting this as a bug it was recommended that I use apt-ftparchive instead so that I don't have to deal with the details of this undocumented format myself. Alas, what I feared was true. dpkg-scanpackages is a simplistic tool so it is possible to use its output even in the face of lack of documentation. This, however, does not apply the apt-ftparchive. It is supposed to create the required files fully automatically. With the provided documentation I was able to make it do exactly nothing, fully automatically. I would appreciate if Debian fully decumented its core tools like package manager. Thanks Michal -- System Information: Debian Release: wheezy/sid APT prefers stable APT policy: (900, 'stable'), (500, 'testing'), (410, 'unstable'), (200, 'experimental'), (111, 'oldstable') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-2-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored: LC_ALL set to en_US.UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
