[Joerg Jaspert] Description-less packages file

[Evan Broder]

We actually seem to be doing this already as of oneiric [1].

As I recall, it was proposed at UDS-O to avoid downloading
descriptions multiple times when we enabled multiarch by default.

- Evan

[1]:
evan at caron:~$ curl -s
http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric/main/binary-amd64/Packages.gz
| zcat | head -n 20
Package: abrowser
Priority: optional
Section: web
Installed-Size: 152
Maintainer: Ubuntu Mozilla Team <ubuntu-mozillateam at lists.ubuntu.com>
Architecture: amd64
Source: firefox
Version: 7.0.1+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu2
Depends: firefox
Filename: pool/main/f/firefox/abrowser_7.0.1+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu2_amd64.deb
Size: 8936
MD5sum: 78319c8c68f1823469e4048b8b531633
SHA1: 3bbeec956df041b00500043d31ffbc045282b399
SHA256: 52c9204338497596432405a467e0ab343c55d4794d074a1e0299d6a8bfb754cf
Description: Safe and easy web browser from Mozilla - transitional package
Description-md5: e89058e4775caff7d26313fa8811675e
Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug
Origin: Ubuntu
Supported: 18m

- Evan

On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 10:36 PM, James Westby <jw+debian at jameswestby.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> This change will likely affect some people in Ubuntu.
>
> We may want to make the change for Ubuntu itself, but first we should
> make sure that all our systems pulling from Debian still work.
>
> Thanks,
>
> James
>
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Joerg Jaspert <joerg at debian.org>
> To: debian-devel at lists.debian.org
> Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2011 22:39:02 +0100
> Subject: Description-less packages file
> Hello world,
>
> I don't know if I really got everyone who should have a copy of this
> mail in my CC list, so please forward it to wherever you think I am
> missing. Thanks.
>
> I just merged a patch from Ansgar to generate the Packages files without
> the English description embedded inside them. Instead they are now
> written into a new file, the "English Translation" file in
> "main/i18n/Translation-en.bz2". They thus appear alongside all other
> translated descriptions as "just another language". apt & co will (or
> should) just download those Translation files to show the description,
> as they do already for all other languages.
> This lets us save quite a bit of space on our mirrors by not repeating
> them as many times as we have architectures - and also enables
> non-English-speaking users (and eventually multi-arch enabled APT) to
> save on download size, as they no longer need to download a language
> that is of no use to them or is already there.
>
>
> As this is is a larger changeset we did not switch the official dists/
> tree directly. Instead we are providing files generated in this way over
> at  [1] for you to test with and report bugs you find in this
> implementation or in the handling of it in whatever tool breaks
> down. That location is updated right during dinstall so should always
> contain current information.
>
> Provided there are no showstoppers turning up we intend to switch the
> official dists/ tree one month from now.
>
> [1] http://ftp-master.debian.org/newdists/
>
> --
> bye, Joerg
> It’s not easy to juggle a pregnant wife and a troubled child, but
> somehow I managed to fit in eight hours of TV a day.
>
> --
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>