pbuilder-apt-config

[Osamu Aoki]

On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 01:21:33AM +0100, Loïc Minier wrote:
>         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
                         --target
>  deb     http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main
>  deb     http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ experimental main
> 
>  ./pbuilder-apt-config --profile karmic-proposed
                         --target
>  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)

What I did generated a set of deb line:
 one for target and one for base distribution.

But since we have /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, making target and base apt
line in separate file is OK.

>  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.

The non-suit "targets" are for convienience for typical uses.  

But this is place we need to gage merits and negatives.  KISS is the
key.

>  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.

Yes.

>  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.

I agree this is something to think deep for extension.

>  (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.

Let me think...