Brian S. Julin wrote: > So all we would need to do is write our own version of MakeMaker that, > in addition to the usual targets like "test" "dist" and "install", also > automatically created rules for construction of a "deb" and "dsc" > target.
This is a really cool idea. One concern is the quantity of debian packages that it would create (I'm not sure if this is a problem). If the number is excessive (more than 50), it might be worthwhile to look at building a "side-distribution", much like how 'non-US' is done now. The new dpkg-ftp (and dpkg-ftp-x) now includes the capability of adding any number of distributions to it. So you can update from the main Debian distribution, as well as the "non-US" distribution, and possibly the "debian-CPAN" distribution... This would also take some of the load off of the mirror sites, since the main distribution seems to be growing without bound. This problem gets even worse when we "eat" other distributions such as CPAN. A different set of mirror sites could be set up to handle each different "side-distribution" such as "debian-CPAN". We could also modify dpkg-ftp to allow the users to select from a list of available sites for the main distribution and each side distribution. We should probably set a maximum size on how large the main distribution should get (2 or 3 gigabytes seems reasonable). Cheers, - Jim (looking forward to a Debian with 100,000 packages...)
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