[apt-proxy-users] Adding support for apt-proxy as a true proxy (was Re: Bug#342101)

[Chris Halls]

tags 342101 - moreinfo
thanks

My idea to solve the problem of apt not understanding multiple backend servers 
is to make it possible to use apt-proxy as a true proxy. So instead of 
changing your client sources.list to point to apt-proxy backends, you would 
configure apt on the client with http::proxy set to the host/port of the 
apt-proxy server. So sources.list could be left essentially unchanged. 
apt-proxy.conf would need a new directive that would map requests to 
backends. Here's an example:

* old client apt.conf
empty

* old client sources.list
deb http://aptproxy:9999/debian etch main
deb http://aptproxy:9999/security etch/updates main

* old apt-proxy.conf
[debian]
backends = http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian

[security]
backends = http://security.debian.org/debian-security

* new client apt.conf
http::proxy http://aptproxy:9999

* new client sources.list
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian etch main
deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security etch/updates main

* new apt-proxy.conf
[debian]
matchhost = http://ftp.*.debian.org/debian
backends = http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian
[security]
backends = http://security.debian.org/debian-security


So, any request that matched a backend path would be automatically mapped to 
the backend, and a new directive allows you to match wildcards in some way, 
where there are multiple servers possible.

This implementation has the advantage of simplifying the client side 
configuration without making the server configuration a lot more complicated.

Chris