package: apt version: 0.1.10 severity: wishlist Hi,
I have a request for the enhancement of the great program called Apt. I have been using the 'apt' method for dselect for quite a long time now and there is one thing I think could be better handled. It's mirror sites that are not quite in sync with the main archive. There are a few mirror sites in my country to which I have faster access than to ftp.debian.org, so my sources.list looks like this (yes, I have a local mirror of non-us and I am following potato almost day-to-day): deb ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/Debian potato main contrib non-free deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian potato main contrib non-free deb file:/home/ftp/pub/debian/debian-non-US potato/binary-$(ARCH)/ deb ftp://nonus.debian.org/debian potato main contrib non-free non-US deb ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/Debian slink main contrib non-free deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian slink main contrib non-free deb file:/home/ftp/pub/debian/debian-non-US slink/binary-$(ARCH)/ deb ftp://nonus.debian.org/debian slink non-US Now, it happens a lot that ftp.nluug.nl has mirrored the latest Packages file but not the newest .deb files. Most of the time it takes a day or two before every package I want to upgrade has found its way to the mirror. In the mean time, apt refuses to upgrade any of the already-downloaded packages. I can call dpkg to install them, but that is of course a suboptimal solution. I would like apt to be extended like this: - If a new package is to be installed, or an installed package is to be upgraded, 1 try to download the latest version from the first site in sources.list that carries the latest version of the package 2 if that fails, try to download the package from the next site that has that version of the package 3 if that fails and there are more sites that carry the same version of the package, go to 2 4 if the package still hasn't been found, fail this package like the current apt does That way, I could have a mirror site which is 'close' to me at the top of sources.list, although it isn't always in sync with master. Second would be a site which is somewhat further away, etc. etc. And ftp.debian.org would be the last in the list because that site is assumed to be always in sync. If I have been unclear in any way, please contact me. Remco
