On Mon, Feb 11, 2002 at 05:18:51PM +1300, Philip Charles wrote: > Maybe there should be several "layers" of Packages files.
I don't think the distributor should try to anticipate the needs of individual users of the distribution at this level. If you want to get rid of all emulated packages, just remove the emulator providing package (or just drop its Provides:) and remove everything that is not installable now because of dependencies. This is a fully automated process. (I think you already have such a process fro CD building, so this is nothing new for you). There might be other metadata in the package that shows if a package is a special optimization, or is only available if emulated. Such metadata might be available implicit and only be valid in the universe the package is distributed in (eg depends on the selection of virtual names chosen). I think this is something that could be added to the design at any time, when it is more clear how an implementation would look like. This is indeed an implementation detail. Special casing the selection rules for the distribution, so that some packages would be installed in different Packages files (based on the criteria they were enabled for the distribution) certainly be possible. Thanks, Marcus -- `Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' Debian http://www.debian.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] Marcus Brinkmann GNU http://www.gnu.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.marcus-brinkmann.de