[Apt-proxy-users] apt-proxy 1.9.7 call for testers

[Chris H. <ha...@de...>]

Hi lurkers,

Manuel is back and has made several updates to apt-proxy v2.  It is now
available from the experimental section of the Debian mirrors.  You can
add experimental to your sources.list with an entry like this:

deb http://hostname:9999/debian project/experimental/main/binary-$(ARCH)/
(Assuming that your backend to the debian repositories is called
'debian', and your local debian mirror does carry experimental).  It
should be installable on sarge and unstable machines without much
difficulty.

Here's a rough summary of the differences between v1 and v2:

* Features
   + Uses python and the twisted framework - much faster, easier to
maintain and a smaller codebase
   + Uses databases to store information about files in the cache
instead of relying on atimes of the underlying filesystem
   + most configuration parameters can be individually set for each
backend.
   + udeb support
   + new config file format which is much easier to use, with automatic
upgrade/downgrade between v1 and v2 formats.

* Bugs present in v1 and fixed for v2
   - Too many to list :D  The most significant one is that v1 will hang
randomly when downloading.  See bugs 187919, 203868, 164911, 171889,
175649 and others.

* Features not yet available in v2
   - rsync backend support
   - multiple backends - v2 can currently only use the first backend
listed
   - apt-proxy-import is reimplemented but is known to have some bugs.

Those missing features can probably be implemented in time for sarge,
but we can't hope to replace v1 unless v2 has had plenty of testing.  I
think that v2 is probably mature enough to enter unstable now, but I
would like some more feedback before making that decision.

So, Manuel & I would be grateful if people could try v2 (well, version
1.9.7 :) out and let us know about the results.  In particular, is the
current version good enough to go into unstable yet, or are the missing
features too important?

The packaging will automatically upgrade your v1 configuration file for
you, creating a new file called apt-proxy-v2.conf.  You can easily
downgrade again, and the older version will use your older
apt-proxy.conf.  The cache directory format is compatible, provided that
your backend directory name is the same as the backend name, i.e. your
add_backend entries look like this:

add_backend /debian/                                    \
        $APT_PROXY_CACHE/debian/                        \

If your backend directory name is different, it is probably easiest to
change the directory name and adjust the configuration before you
upgrade.

Please report bugs using reportbug, and tag them with 'experimental'.  I
will try and go through the list of older bugs soon to work out which
are fixed in v2 to make it easier to see which are still outstanding.

Thanks,
Chris & Manuel