[Soc-coordination] Summer of Code Ideas

[Chris Baines]

On Mon, 2011-02-14 at 16:27 +0100, David Kalnischkies wrote:
> As always, implement it in APT (or libapt for that matter) and use it in
> all front-ends instead of somewhere up the dependency tree as this will
> simple destroy the possibility of sharing -- we have a lot of tools working
> with packages so you simple don't want to implement it in all of them.
> Thankfully, the indexes and packages download is shared in libapt.

Where exactly is this libapt, I have looked for it but cant find it
exactly? 

> On debdelta itself: I have already commented on APT's devel-list 'deity'
> in a thread from another student what i think about debdelta [0]:
> 
> >> etc.. Also they had mentioned about the official adoption of debdeltas
> >> for Debian.
> >
> > That is another interesting thing. The problem is currently that a download
> > method doesn't get to know which version of the package is currently
> > installed (if any) which is needed as far as i understand it to repack
> > a package to apply the debdiff to… but yeah, nothing which would be
> > impossible to solve i guess.
> 
> In the meantime i have also found the bugreport for it: #498778

Thanks for the links, I don’t think I would want to attempt anything
like the streaming idea, personally I think there are many more
improvements that should be made before that is implemented.

My revised project idea is to:
 - Integrate the debdelta repositories in to standard apt repositories.
   They both have the same structure and this would  allow for easier
   propagation of debdeltas, if its decided that there use should be
   more widespread.
 - Allow the core apt utilities to understand the debdelta format and
   use them to create debs.
 - Add integration in to aptitude/apt-get to use the new features added
   above. 

I feel that these improvements, properly implemented could if wanted
really add to the usability of Debian. 

On another note, I think apt-get and aptitude could learn from debdelta
in a sense of speed. Debdelta uses multiple threads to achieve results
faster, apt-get and aptitude could do this two by perhaps unpacking
downloaded debs immediately after downloading while continuing to
download any other required debs. This could also be another improvement
I could look at?

On yet another note, how flexible is Debian with timings? I live in the
UK and attend Six Form full time, I am currently in Year 13, and have my
final exams from the 15th to the 21st of June. These are crucial for my
entrance in to university. This means that, if accepted, I will not be
able to code full time until the end of my exams.

I think however that I will be able to work around this, I am able to
code full time after the end of my exams, and can code in my limited
spare time before and during my exams. I see this as hopefully improving
the way in which I approach the program as I will spend a bit more time
researching my methodology before fully implementing it (cue Einstein
quote [0]).

I also will continue working on Debian over my summer before University,
as hopefully it will be good preparation and be a good use of my time. 

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Chris

[0] http://litemind.com/problem-definition/
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 836 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/soc-coordination/attachments/20110214/49b57f4d/attachment.pgp>