Pristine source archive

[M. Drew Streib]

On Sat, Apr 13, 2002 at 05:24:16PM +1000, Glenn McGrath wrote:
> I imagine the biggest problem with this idea is getting distributions to
> use it, which would probably require modification of their archive and
> package managment tools.

Actually, the biggest obstacle would be the loss of control of 
a distribution to be able to fully test a controlled set of binaries.

In a sense, both Red Hat and Debian already do this (as do many others)
in that the SRPMS or source dpkgs do include the original upstream
source (usually) and patches made by the distribution. The binary
release can obviously not do this.

I agree in philosophy, but might argue that in practice, distributions
already do this for the majority of packages now. It isn't that hard
to see what a distribution has changed on any given piece of software,
as patches are available.

Don't underestimate the need for controlled testing of a full binary
distribution, something which a source-only distribution can unfortunately
not accomplish. (Not that I don't think there is use for these,
but there are certainly big disadvantages.)

-drew

-- 
M. Drew Streib <dtype at dtype.org>, Free Standards Group (freestandards.org)
co-founder, SourceForge.net | core team, freedb | sysadmin, Linux Intl.
creator, keyanalyze report | maintnr, *.us.pgp.net | other freedom/law
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