Has anyone explored using a custom package repository in tandem with the official debian respository?
We've been packaging up local software and distributing them via apt, along with official Debian packages. We've been using a MySQL backend to compare versions and give priority to local packages, regardless of the official package's version - generating a single Packages.gz on the fly. The problem is I'm overriding official packages with our own customised versions, for various reasons, and I need to retain this functionality. I'm re-writing each component from scratch to make it more flexible and to reduce ongoing maintenance, and I'm curious if there's a better way. One option is to prepend a known epoch onto each package's version-revision, I'm assuming this would safely override all other packages of that name given a large enough epoch. Is anyone doing anything similar, or are there any plans to support this kind of functionality in apt/deity? FYI: this is all for use with an FAI-like non-interactive installer - so we need to replace packages like lilo that rely on user interaction (and potentially others as they crop up for other reasons) until they're all using debconf and FAI is more popular. In general, a tool to manage and control package distribution with a local mirror would be useful for many large sites. Moreso for accountability and testing in commercial environments, than for any lack of trust in Debian releases. -- Niall Young [EMAIL PROTECTED] System Administrator, iiNet Limited Ph: 9213 1330 / 0408 192 797 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
