dwww Home | Show directory contents | Find package

* What it is:

        This project is a leightweight feature complete manager of a debian
        package (i.e. binary .deb and source .dsc+.tar.gz+.diff.gz) repository.
        Emphasis is put on having all packages in the pool/-directory,
        maximal checking of all sources.
        generation of signed Release file, Contents, ...
        Libraries needed are libdb{3,4.?,5.?} and libz.
        Libraries used if available are libgpgme, libbz2 and libarchive.

* Current status:

        The main features work without problems. Some special use cases
        might not be very well tested.

* Some naming conventions:
        basename: the name of a file without any directory information.
        filekey: the position relative to the mirrordir.
        (as found as "Filename:" in Packages.gz)
        full filename: the position relative to /

        architecture: The term like "sparc","i386","mips",...
        component: Things like "main" "non-free" "contrib" ...
                   (somtimes also called sections)
        section: Things like "base" "interpreters" "oldlibs"
                   (sometimes also called subsections)
        type: The kind of packages, currently supported:
                "deb", "udeb" and "dsc".
        target: The smallest unit packages are in. A target
                is specified by the codename of the distribution
                it is in, the architecture, component and type.
                When architecture is "source" exactly when
                the type is "dsc".
        identifier: an internal string to specify a target,
                it has the form "<codename>|<component>|source"
                for type dsc, "<codename>|<component>|<architecture>"
                for type deb and "u|<codename>|<component>|<architecture>"
                for type udeb.

        md5sum: The checksum of a file, being in the format
                "<md5sum of file> <length of file>"


* Differences to how other standard tools handle the situation:

 - mirroring:
        This makes no real mirror of the distribution, but
        only of it contents. Thus the Index-files will
        be different. (And thus no longer can be verified
        by the offical signatures). This means people using
        this mirror have to trust you to not include anything
        ugly, as they can only check your signature directly.
        (Or in other words: not useful for mirroring things
         to be used by strangers).
 - location:
        The directory layout under pool/ is only divided
        by the component and the sourcename. Ecspecially
        woody and updates/woody will share the same space,
        thus avoiding multiple instances of the same file.
        (Can also cause trouble in the rare cases, when both
         have a file of the same name with different md5sum.
         Using -f can help here).
 - 'byhand'-section
        This is currently just implemented as alias for '-',
        to make sure lack of implementation does not cause them
        to land in a byhand-section...
 - Override files:
        Only the ExtraOverride style of apt-ftparchive(1) is
        supported.
        (i.e. "packagename Section section\npackagename Maintainer maintainer\n")
        Note that other than apt-ftparchive case is most likely
        to be significant. (Having the wrong case in might also
        cause havoc in apt-ftparchive, as that changes the case of
        the fieldname, which might confuse other programms...)

* Things that might be intresting to know:

 - guessing the component:
        If inserting a binary or source package without naming
        an component, this program has to guess of course.
        This will done the following way: It will take the
        first component with the name of the section, being
        prefix to the section, being suffix to the section
        or having the section as prefix or any.
        Thus having specifiend the components:
        "main non-free contrib non-US/main non-US/non-free non-US/contrib"
        should map .e.g
        "non-US" to "non-US/main" and "contrib/editors" to "contrib",
        while having only "main non-free and contrib" as components should
        map e.g. "non-US/contrib" to "contrib" and "non-US" to "main".

        NOTE: Always specify main as the first component, if you want things
              to end up there.
        NOTE: unlike in dak, non-US and non-us are different things...

Generated by dwww version 1.15 on Tue Aug 26 01:14:45 CEST 2025.