Posted: May 6, 2003

Summary

OSS will be changing the way we organize the software repository to better facilitate our upcoming dated release structure. Within the next month, you will need to make one simple change to your apt configuration to continue using apt-get to install software.

This change is necessary for apt-get to continue working on your machine(s). All software will continue to be available with the updated configuration. This change only affects where apt-get looks for software on our server.

The new configuration is active on our server now. For the next month, apt-get will work if you have either the old or new configuration, after which the old configuration will no longer work. If you do not make this change, apt-get will no longer be able to find and install software after June 6, 2003.

Change Needed

In your /usr/local/etc/apt/sources.list file you will have a line that looks close to this:

rpm ftp://rpm.rutgers.edu/rpm-packages sparc64-sun-solaris2.9 stable

This sample machine is a 64-bit Solaris 9 machine running the stable release.
The new style for this configuration is:

rpm ftp://rpm.rutgers.edu/solaris/solaris9-sparc64 stable main

Note: You should not need to run stable and testing together anymore, testing is a complete release in itself. If you do wish to have both listed you need to have one line for stable and one for testing, listing them both on the same line will no longer work.

The information above is everything you need to follow right now. Below is some additional explaination about what we're doing, but it is not essential to read it.

Explaination

The repository is organized by apt into release names and each release has one or more components. Prevously, we had the release name set to the platform, which above was sparc64-sun-solaris2.9 and the component was stable. For reasons that do not directly affect the end users, we need to fix this so the release name is the actual release name and then have the software in a component of that release. The component name we will be using is main.

The new style configuration will specify these are rpms with rpm. Then what platform you are using by pointing to the correct location (URI) on the server. This is followed by the release name stable and the component main.

The Future

Updates to Stable

As we move toward a staggered release structure we plan on adding another component to the stable distribution, mainly one that only contains urgent security fixes. This will be called updates. To specify that your machine should pull packages from main and updates, just add updates to the apt line like this:

rpm ftp://rpm.rutgers.edu/solaris/solaris9-sparc64 stable main updates

Periodic Releases / Release Names

OSS will be making periodic releases of the repository, much like the way Sun produces periodic releases of Solaris, where the software contained in each release are, for the most part, new versions.

Previously we had stable and testing. When we felt packages were of good quality they would move from testing into stable.

We will no longer be trickling packages into stable. Now, all development work will be done in testing. Periodically the software in testing will be deemed of good quality and the release, as a whole, will become our stable release (And the previous stable will be archived)

How? The releases are going to have names, the names of the elements. Our first release is called hydrogen and, right now, stable is just an alias for hydrogen. Also, our developing release is helium with testing being an alias for it. When it's time for the testing release to become stable, stable will become an alias for helium. The old release, hydrogen, will still be accessible by its name.

This is can be thought of as Solaris versions, but note that these releases WILL NOT correlate with when Sun releases new versions, this is only an example. When you specify stable you are saying you want the newest stable release; if you specify testing you are asking for the newest development release. When we make a new release, and the testing software goes stable, a person requesting stable will have access to our latest stable release, including all the new software that it includes.

If you do not want to do this, and want to request something like this specific version you will need to specify the release name instead of stable or testing If you specify hydrogen right now, there will be no new software available to you, even when we stablize the next release. However, if you reinstall your machine in a few months for now, you will still be able to install the same versions of the software you previously installed, regardless of what's being considered stable, testing, or even outdated.