[arch-dev-public] [arch-general] [pacman-dev] debug package repositories

[Dan McGee]

On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 10:57 AM, Thomas M Steenholdt <tmus at tmus.dk> wrote:
> On 2013-04-15 13:19, Dan McGee wrote:
>> On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 10:05 AM, Tom Gundersen <teg at jklm.no> wrote:
>>> On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 4:53 PM, Lukas Jirkovsky <l.jirkovsky at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On 15 April 2013 10:52, Allan McRae <allan at archlinux.org> wrote:
>>>>> In fact, I will provide the needed patches for a separate [debug] and
>>>>> [community-debug] repo if that is what is decided to happen.
>>>> You have my full support when it comes to having debug packages in a
>>>> separate repository.
>>>>
>>>> On 15 April 2013 15:00, Tom Gundersen <teg at jklm.no> wrote:
>>>>> Couldn't pacman be fixed to only show debug packages in search results when
>>>>> you ask for it with a switch? Maybe something similar could be done for
>>>>> language packages?
>>>> A simple alias/wrapper using grep on the pacman output would work too ;-)
>>> Yeah, so why make a separate repo? What's the problem with keeping
>>> debug packages in the normal repos?
>> Our database files are rather large at this point, and for those that
>> will never install debug packages, having to download extra stuff
>> every time we update even one package in the database starts to get a
>> bit crazy.
>>
>> Adding PGP signatures to our databases made these files grow quite a
>> bit; I'd be hesitant to double the size of them again.
>>
>> -Dan
>>
>> $ ls -lh /var/lib/pacman/sync/
>> total 3.8M
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  52K Apr 14 13:17 community-testing.db
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1.9M Apr 15 06:26 community.db
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 106K Apr 15 05:15 core.db
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1.5M Apr 15 05:09 extra.db
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3.8K Apr 13 14:09 multilib-testing.db
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 105K Apr 13 18:59 multilib.db
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 126K Apr 15 06:37 testing.db
> Hi Dan,
>
> Sorry for replying directly, but I cannot send to the arch-dev-public list.
>
> I just thought there might be a hybrid solution to this problem, adding a -debug.db
> database file for each repo, and "activate" it using a pacman.conf flag.
>
> Example:
>
> [testing]
> DebugPkgs = Disabled # Or not defined
> =
> update and use only testing.db
>
> [testing]
> DebugPkgs = Enabled
> =
> update and use both testing.db and testing-debug.db
>
> With my limited insight, this keeps the "real" packages and their debug
> information in the "same" repository (which may or may not be easier to work
> with during package building), while limiting the download-size to the non-debug
> part of the repository, unless DebugPkgs - or whatever it would be called - has
> been explicitly enabled.
>
> The solution is not far from simply creating a testing-debug repository,
> but I think it would feel more integrated.

It would also be significantly more work, require changes to pacman,
etc. I don't see much benefit over a seperate repo other than a
slightly less verbose pacman.conf setup.

-Dan