pbuilder-apt-config

[Loïc Minier]

        Hey Osamu,

 Following various discussions we had, I tried drafting a
 pbuilder-apt-config command; I think it could be useful even outside of
 pbuilder since other tools / scripts need to be able to generate
 sources.list (I'm aware of e.g. vmbuilder, rootstock, etc. basically
 tools which create chroots/build envs/virtual machines).

 ./pbuilder-apt-config --profile experimental
 deb     http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main
 deb     http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ experimental main

 ./pbuilder-apt-config --profile karmic-proposed
 deb     http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic main
 deb     http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic-updates main
 deb     http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic-proposed main

 ./pbuilder-apt-config --profile etch-backports
 deb     http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ etch main
 deb     http://www.backports.org/backports.org/ etch-backports main

 ./pbuilder-apt-config --suite sid --mirror http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/
 deb     http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ sid main

 ./pbuilder-apt-config --suite jaunty --arch armel
 deb     http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ jaunty main

 Now doing this I discovered a couple of things:
 - either you want the tool to help you generate one "deb" line,
   possibly guessing some values from your input (possibly no guesses at
   all)
 - or you want the tool to help you generate multiple "deb" lines,
   guessing most of the values from your input (possibly overriding some
   values)

 In the first case, it's more of a technical interface "I know what I'm
 doing"; in the latter case, it's more about trying to be nice and guess
 the right thing, except some things might have to be customized such as
 the mirror.

 We could decide that we don't want to support the first mode because
 it's technically possible to implement it with --aptconfdir.  I don't
 quite like this mechanism, but that would make it much simpler.

 The tool is not complete because it doesn't allow overriding mirrors (I
 intend to add a mirror-map flag to list "vendor url" pairs which would
 override all mirrors.  The single --mirror approach doens't work with
 Debian backports repos for instance.  I'm not quite sure how to do a
 mirror-map which would allow overriding the mirror for a particular
 architecture, so I might have to do differently.

 (There are probably plenty of bugs such as not handling commas in
 pockets or components.)

 Let me know whether you agree it makes sense to have a centralized
 wrapper for "give me the sources.list for this".  It could be extended
 to output the debootstrap mirror / script.

   Cheers
-- 
Loïc Minier