Stephen Pair <stephen at pairhome.net> wrote:
> goran.krampe at bluefish.se wrote:
> 
> >That slave server mirrors the master SM server(s) and additionally
> >contains your packages (which aren't visible outside your company). When
> >you feel like publishing a package outside of your company you should
> >easily be able to do that and your slave server should contact the SM
> >master and "move" the package entry up to the master instead thus making
> >it visible for the rest of us.
> 
> This is where I have an issue...the package should not "move" up to the 
> master, but rather the master should defer queries on that package to 
> the other server.  Also, I think you're getting to wrapped up in the 

I actually don't agree. :-) See below.

> details of how to handle master/slave style replication.  Instead, why 
> not focus on getting a distributed and *non-replicated* model working 
> first.  You can worry about replication (for redundancy and reduced 
> bandwidth) later.

It is actually much easier to implement a replicated scheme than a
distributed nonreplicated model. I mean - that is exactly how it is done
today!

And my main point in all this:

The map on your disk should be *complete*. Otherwise the dependency
engine etc can not work as easily. I want to be able to give the engine
a list of packages that I want to install and it should be able to look
it over and resolve the conflicts. And this *without* having to try to
contact servers all around the Net that might be up/down not responding
etc. Such a model really gets complex.

I want the Map to be *complete* and *replicated*. That is a key design
choice I wholeheartedly stand behind. I don't need the scalability of
DNS. So sorry Stephen, on this issue you will need to do a lot of
lobbying to convince me otherwise! ;-)

Btw, this is also how it works in Debian. Well, you can have multiple
sources etc. but I actually think that was a mistake on their part - it
just means that you don't have a complete map. You know - "Gnome 2?
Well, if you add this line to your sources file then..."...

regards, Göran