Debian source.list man page

[Alex Satrapa]

On Thursday, August 8, 2002, at 04:06 , Alfred wrote:

> ... in particular the sources.list and what each entry meant.

I agree that the source.list man page is a little cryptic, so perhaps we 
on the CLUG list might be able to come up with another example, such as 
that included in the LordSutch distribution (I don't know where this 
came from prior to being included in LordSutch):

        If the mirror has these directories:

          ftp://some-server/debian/dists/potato/main/binary-i386/...
          ftp://some-server/debian/dists/potato/contrib/binary-i386/...
          ------------------------       ------ |   |
                      \___                 /    |   |
        add:              \               /     |   |
              ------------------------ ------   |   |
          deb ftp://some-server/debian potato main contrib

        As shown, the `dists' is added implicitly, and the 3rd,...
        arguments are used to expand the path into multiple directories.

        If you use a complete mirror that also has non-free and non-US,
        you typically have to add lines like these:

          deb ftp://some-server/debian potato main contrib non-free
          deb ftp://some-server/debian-non-US potato/non-US main contrib
        non-free

So there are three pieces of interest:
  1) The mirror path
  2) The distribution
  3) The components, in a space-delimited list

The mirror path is everything before the "dists" element.  The 
distribution is everything after the "dist/" element, eg:
  - stable
  - unstable
  - testing

In both path and distribution, do not use leading or trailing slashes.

IIRC "testing" contains packages that are based on "the latest and 
greatest" versions of the software that they package, and "unstable" 
includes stuff from "testing" that hasn't had any (major?) changes for 
two weeks. "stable" contains stuff that has been relatively un-changed 
for the duration of the "freeze" process - woody is now a month old, and 
you will find that a lot of the software in woody is actually six to 
twelve months old alredy, due to the testing and freezing process.

So if you're happy to run whatever happens to be called "stable" this 
month, and you want to access the mirrors at PlanetMirror.com.au, you 
could navigate with your web browser to find:

   http://www.planetmirror.com.au/debian/dists/stable/

Which will contain directories such as "main", "contrib" and 
"non-free".  There should also be a bunch of "Contents-*.gz" files.  Now 
you can disassemble this path into:
  1) The mirror path (everything before "/dists") = 
"http://www.planetmirror.com.au/debian"
  2) The distribution = "stable"
  3) The components = "main contrib non-free"

So one line of your sources.list should look like:

deb http://www.planetmirror.com.au/debian stable main contrib non-free

A more complex situation is where you want to use non-US versions of 
software, such as can be found at the mirror:

   http://www.planetmirror.com.au/debian-non-US/dists/stable/non-US/

Remember, you're looking for the directory that contains the components 
and the Contents-*.gz files.

Now the parts are:
  1) The mirror path (everything before "/dists") = 
"http://www.planetmirror.com.au/debian-non-US"
  2) The distribution = "stable/non-US"
  3) The components = "main contrib non-free"

I'd like to submit this explanation to the apt bugs list as a suggested 
documentation change.

Any suggestions?
Alex
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