Packaging for Debian & Ubuntu

[Paul Gear]

Hi folks,

I thought i'd ask a technical question here to give us a bit of relief
from the leadership structure and all that.  :-)

I have previously maintained my own software repository for my Debian
systems, but it fell into disuse.  When i came back to re-visit the
question, i found that the ballgame had changed, and my scripts to
maintain my site (they used dpkg-scanpackages and dpkg-scansources)
don't work any more.  I found this page which talks about tools to
create my own repository:
<http://wiki.debian.org/HowToSetupADebianRepository>.  That page doesn't
seem to nominate a clear winner, and lots of the products seem to be
poorly documented or abandoned.

Here are the factors in my repository creation equation:

   1. I need to support Debian & Ubuntu, both i386 & amd64 (but
      preferably all architectures) with one repository and one build
      process.
   2. Most of my packages are small and architecture-independent (perl
      scripts, Java programs, and the like), but i don't want to be
      limited to this.
   3. I want to run the repository on my own LAN to provide maximum
      speed and availability to my servers - this rules out using PPA.
   4. I want to use a product that is under active development and/or
      use by Debian and/or Ubuntu developers - this means it should be
      available in main or universe.
   5. I'd prefer to maintain as few repository management files as
      possible.  The archive will not get big and complex, so it's OK to
      maintain some by hand, but i'd rather not.
   6. I want to keep all older versions of my packages online.  (My old
      scripts used to complain every time i uploaded a new version
      because there were already 27 existing versions in the repository.)
   7. I'd prefer to find something that is reasonably well-documented,
      because asking Debian developers for help is like extracting blood
      from a stone (just try #debian on IRC sometime if you don't
      believe me), and Ubuntu folks tend to look at you all weird-like
      when you don't want to do everything through launchpad & PPA.

Is this a reasonable list?  Is there a product that fits the bill? 
Melissa suggested Falcon on IRC earlier, but it fails #4; "quail"
suggested debmirror, but it seems to be just for mirroring the main
repositories, not creating your own.  Most of the products on the page
in the Debian wiki seem to fail on #4, #5, or #7.  It almost seems as if
development of these tools has splintered beyond hope of consolidation.

Thanks in advance,
Paul

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