RFC: plan wrt official archive

[Robert Millan]

Hi!

According to the estimations I heard, it is likely that an official archive at
debian.org is created soon (in the following weeks/months).  I guess this will
attract a lot of attention from the Debian community, and also from the outside
(we could try at being slashdotted).

Perhaps it'd be a good idea to be prepared and know what to do.  I'm trying to
draft a document to summarise that.  I'd like hear what you think about it.
Here's what I came up to begin with.  Perhaps I should put it on svn so that
others can make their modifications.  Should I?

Before D-day
~~~~~~~~~~~~

- Have a relatively bug-free install CD image, with base system in a reasonably
  good status for new users (this has been true at some times, but it's been
  quite intermitent.  that's mostly my fault.)

- Have the archive in a state in which major packages like kde or gnome are
  installable/usable.  Currently this is true for kde, but gnome is not
  installable due to versioned mozilla dependency.

Inmediately after D-day
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

- Upload a new install image, using the same known-to-work base.tgz, but in
  sources.list, instead of:
    deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian dists/unstable/main/binary-i386/
  use:
    deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian unstable main

  I think the gnuab unstable line would have to be kept for a while, at least
  untill we finish the transition to debian.org.

- Try to get some propaganda in places like osnews, slashdot, DWN, etc.

After D-day, but not necessarily inmediately
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

- Add a postinst hack in freebsd-utils that would run sed on sources.list to
  make the change mentioned aboce, using the following regexp (after asking the
  user for permission).

    "s,://ftp\.\(..\)\.debian\.org/debian dists/unstable/main/binary-i386/*,://ftp.\1.debian.org/debian unstable main,g"

    (improvements for the regexp very welcome)

- Figure out how will we use the new archive.  Are we [1] going to:

  a) Re-upload the same packages we have in gnuab unstable using the same
     .changes files?
  b) Rebuild unstable packages as usual, and upload to official archive? (despite
     their dependencies on "unreleased" packages; notably libc0.1)
  c) Rebuild unstable packages using a strictly-unstable environment with only
     unstable packages?  (currently not possible)

  In case we pick c), some serious work needs to be done, specialy on glibc (see
  my previous mail about status of the base system).

  [1] Well, not really "we", since I'm no longer DD and won't upload anything.
  (I'm just trying to help a bit).

-- 
Robert Millan