hi alex
This isn't restricted to unstable--the stable tree has similar issues. The upstream sites who produce the sources change things around when new versions come out.
What has been done is that Fink has "Master" mirrors set up, on which every source file is supposed to be available. This is in the FAQ, too.
can u please point me to the right location? i cannot find the point about the master mirrors. i have just found q4.14, which partially answers my question and solves my problems.
When you run "fink configure", you can specify using a Master mirror as your first site to hit. You can also select "Use next mirror set Master" when a download fails.
The master sites _are_ updated automatically, though when a new version of a package comes out it takes a while for the new source tarball to get mirrored.
sure, that is what i have experienced with debian and i know that this cannot be improved (not without certain amount of money for real-time-updates :))) ).
in my case i have experienced this problem with two particular packages: the perl-package digest-md5 and file. both have been updated on the download-servers and the old versions have been removed. so the info file pointed to the old version which does no longer exist on one of the servers.
so, for me this is quite fine, because i believe to know what was happening and i solved the problem for me. for unexperienced user this could a reason to not to use fink any more, because it could be frustrating. sure, noone forces them to use unstable, but who is not using the latest version of the software on a desktop system?
It's possible, though it seems like most people post to the mailing list--which means that the problem gets known.
and even in the case that the user is using stable, there is same problem (you have mentioned it at the beginning of the mail). this means that fink and the packagers relies on the feedback of users, if a package does no longer exist (huh, user feed back, is this really working?). i mean, one way to improve the confidence of normal users into fink is to ensure that at least the stable tree is consistent.
Every so often somebody does a check by running "fink fetch-all", which tries to download every package. This could be done more regularly--it's tedious, though, because I think there's about 1000 packages in the stable tree, and twice that in unstable.
just my 2 euro-cents. dont bother to answer the mail, because i know, that you all have better things to do.
thanks for the great work, keep on coding,
gottfried
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