[Soc-coordination] Offline Updating Proposal

[Obey Arthur Liu]

Chris Oliver a écrit :
> I have two ideas here, one is to create a framework that adapts working
> environments to be able to download packages using common tools for the
> offline machine. The second idea, from Daniel Burrows, was to actually
> modify the frontends to support this sort of activity. The latter idea
> would be a more limited approach to the task, as it would only be
> modifying existing tools which are not already cross-platform as my
> original idea was to include. However this provides a level of
> simplicity that cannot be obtained with the framework. I'm somewhat lost
> on which idea I should choose. Any pointers?

I don't think Daniel will complain, so I will post a part of his response:
> I think I understand what you're doing a little better (the comment
> about a Windows frontend confused me for a moment), but it still seems
> to me like you basically should be modifying apt frontends.  Just have
> them spit out a list of URLs and information about what they want to do
> instead of actually downloading and installing packages, and have your
> special tool read the list of URLs and download them.  No mess, no fuss,
> no need to simulate an apt environment on the networked machine.  The
> main drawback would be sneakernetting to fetch package list updates, but
> once you have the ability to build a list of URLs, you could just run
> aptitude on the networked machine with an appropriate value for
> APT_ROOT_DIR.

I think the problem of sneakernet lag should not be underestimated. On
sid, even a day can be enough for critical parts of a package changeset
to disappear from the repository... Also, the movement would be (pardon
the ascii-*art*):

    Networked                                Non-networked
        |                                           |
        |  <----------- sources.list -------------  |
fetch repository package lists                      |
        |  ------------ package lists ----------->  |
        |                          choose actions, generate download set
        |  <----------- download set -------------  |
download packages                                   |
        |  -------------- packages -------------->  |
        |                                    install/remove
        |                                           |

Whereas the previous solution would be:

    Networked                                Non-networked
        |                                           |
        |  <------ status files & friends --------  |
fetch repository package lists                      |
choose actions, download packages                   |
        |  -------------- packages -------------->  |
        |                                    install/remove
        |                                           |

See ?

Also, the second project would be much less exciting and much too small
for a GSoC project anyway.
I think that the original idea would be more easily extensible to other
applications like centralized administration of computers..

Arthur

-- 
Obey Arthur Liu
<http://www.milliways.fr>

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