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<title>The Debian GNU/Linux FAQ - Footnotes</title>
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The Debian GNU/Linux FAQ
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<h2><a href="ch-ftparchives.en.html#fr1" name="f1">1</a></h2>
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When the present-day sid did not exist, the FTP site organization had one major
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flaw: there was an assumption that when an architecture is created in the
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current unstable, it will be released when that distribution becomes the new
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stable. For many architectures that isn't the case, with the result that those
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directories had to be moved at release time. This was impractical because the
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move would chew up lots of bandwidth.
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The archive administrators worked around this problem for several years by
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placing binaries for unreleased architectures in a special directory called
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"sid". For those architectures not yet released, the first time they
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were released there was a link from the current stable to sid, and from then on
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they were created inside the unstable tree as normal. This layout was somewhat
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With the advent of package pools (see <a href="#s-pools">What's in the
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<samp>pool</samp> directory?, Section 5.10</a>), binary packages began to be
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stored in a canonical location in the pool, regardless of the distribution, so
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releasing a distribution no longer causes large bandwidth consumption on the
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mirrors (there is, however, a lot of gradual bandwidth consumption throughout
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the development process).
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<h2><a href="ch-ftparchives.en.html#fr2" name="f2">2</a></h2>
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<samp>dists/stable/main</samp>, <samp>dists/stable/contrib</samp>,
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<samp>dists/stable/non-free</samp>, and <samp>dists/unstable/main/</samp>, etc.
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<h2><a href="ch-ftparchives.en.html#fr3" name="f3">3</a></h2>
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Historically, packages were kept in the subdirectory of <samp>dists</samp>
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corresponding to which distribution contained them. This turned out to cause
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various problems, such as large bandwidth consumption on mirrors when major
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changes were made. This was fixed with the introduction of the package pool.
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The <samp>dists</samp> directories are still used for the index files used by
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programs like <samp>apt</samp>. You may also still see paths containing
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<samp>dists/potato</samp> or <samp>dists/woody</samp> in the Filename header
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field of some older packages.
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<h2><a href="ch-pkgtools.en.html#fr4" name="f4">4</a></h2>
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Notice that there are ports that make this tool available with other package
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management systems, like Red Hat package manager, also known as
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<h2><a href="ch-pkgtools.en.html#fr5" name="f5">5</a></h2>
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Although this can also lead to systems with more packages installed than they
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actually need to work.
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<h2><a href="ch-support.en.html#fr6" name="f6">6</a></h2>
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Use the debian-<var>list-subject</var>-REQUEST@lists.debian.org address for
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The Debian GNU/Linux FAQ
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version 3.1.5, 17 January 2007<br>
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Authors are listed at <a href="ch-faqinfo.en.html#s-authors">Debian FAQ Authors</a><br>