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Number of Debian packages available.

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Lisi

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Oct 16, 2012, 6:40:02 AM10/16/12
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Hello, all!
I have searched Wikipedia and the Debian wiki. I have Googled. I am clearly
using the wrong search terms, although I tried rewording in sundry different
ways.

Approximately, in round terms, how may packages are available in Debian
(Squeeze?)
1. in main
2. in main, contrib and non-free

I have an idea of roughly 20,000 in my head, but cannot remember why I think
it and it may be vastly out. Nor into which of my two categories the figure
falls, if by any miracle it is correct.

Thanks,
Lisi


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Lisi

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Oct 16, 2012, 6:50:01 AM10/16/12
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On Tuesday 16 October 2012 11:30:41 Lisi wrote:
> Approximately, in round terms, how may packages are available in Debian
^^^^
> (Squeeze?)
> 1. in main
> 2. in main, contrib and non-free

many, not may :-(

Lisi


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Titanus Eramius

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Oct 16, 2012, 7:00:02 AM10/16/12
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On Tue, 16 Oct 2012 11:30:41 +0100
Lisi <lisi....@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello, all!
> I have searched Wikipedia and the Debian wiki. I have Googled. I am
> clearly using the wrong search terms, although I tried rewording in
> sundry different ways.
>
> Approximately, in round terms, how may packages are available in
> Debian (Squeeze?)
> 1. in main
> 2. in main, contrib and non-free
>
> I have an idea of roughly 20,000 in my head, but cannot remember why
> I think it and it may be vastly out. Nor into which of my two
> categories the figure falls, if by any miracle it is correct.
>
> Thanks,
> Lisi
>
>

Maybe from Synaptic? It lists a total of packages it can fetch in the
bottom left corner. I have all three archives active + backports,
testing and unstable and Synaptic reports 43132 packages is available.

But the question might be, what's a package, and what's a libary? Just
my thoughts though.

Cheers :)


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Brian

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Oct 16, 2012, 7:00:02 AM10/16/12
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On Tue 16 Oct 2012 at 11:30:41 +0100, Lisi wrote:

> I have searched Wikipedia and the Debian wiki. I have Googled. I am clearly
> using the wrong search terms, although I tried rewording in sundry different
> ways.
>
> Approximately, in round terms, how may packages are available in Debian
> (Squeeze?)
> 1. in main
> 2. in main, contrib and non-free

Edit your /etc/apt/sources.list to have only the line

deb <your_mirror> squeeze non-free

Then

apt-get update

and look at the output.

Add "contrib" to the line above and repeat, Do the same with "main" added.
Do sums.


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Darac Marjal

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Oct 16, 2012, 7:00:03 AM10/16/12
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On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 12:46:01PM +0200, Titanus Eramius wrote:
> On Tue, 16 Oct 2012 11:30:41 +0100
> Lisi <lisi....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hello, all!
> > I have searched Wikipedia and the Debian wiki. I have Googled. I am
> > clearly using the wrong search terms, although I tried rewording in
> > sundry different ways.
> >
> > Approximately, in round terms, how may packages are available in
> > Debian (Squeeze?)
> > 1. in main
> > 2. in main, contrib and non-free
> >
> > I have an idea of roughly 20,000 in my head, but cannot remember why
> > I think it and it may be vastly out. Nor into which of my two
> > categories the figure falls, if by any miracle it is correct.

According to my reading of the manual:

aptitude search '~smain'
and
aptitude search '~smain|~scontrib|~snon-free'

should give you the answers you seek, however, I seem to get 0 for the
first and only 626 for the second, so my search-fu is failing me today.

>
> Maybe from Synaptic? It lists a total of packages it can fetch in the
> bottom left corner. I have all three archives active + backports,
> testing and unstable and Synaptic reports 43132 packages is available.
>
> But the question might be, what's a package, and what's a libary? Just
> my thoughts though.

Everything's a package, though it'd make sense to remove virtual
packages from the list.

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Jon Dowland

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Oct 16, 2012, 7:00:03 AM10/16/12
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This can be answered (by a developer) using UDD -
http://wiki.debian.org/UltimateDebianDatabase

The answer today is

udd=> select count(*),release from public.packages group by release;
count | release
--------+--------------------------
2 | wheezy-security
272170 | wheezy
189517 | squeeze
298810 | sid
13816 | squeeze-backports
8712 | squeeze-security
34908 | experimental
746 | wheezy-proposed-updates
372 | squeeze-updates
625 | squeeze-proposed-updates
(10 rows)

or source packages

udd=> select count(*),release from public.sources group by release;
count | release
-------+--------------------------
1 | wheezy-security
17867 | wheezy
14969 | squeeze
18854 | sid
599 | squeeze-backports
207 | squeeze-security
1007 | experimental
16 | wheezy-proposed-updates
6 | squeeze-updates
9 | squeeze-proposed-updates
(10 rows)


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Andrei POPESCU

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Oct 16, 2012, 7:10:01 AM10/16/12
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On Ma, 16 oct 12, 11:30:41, Lisi wrote:
> Hello, all!
> I have searched Wikipedia and the Debian wiki. I have Googled. I am clearly
> using the wrong search terms, although I tried rewording in sundry different
> ways.
>
> Approximately, in round terms, how may packages are available in Debian
> (Squeeze?)
> 1. in main
> 2. in main, contrib and non-free

Source or binary packages? If you consider source packages then Open
Office counts as one package, but if you consider binary packages it
will be a lot more (especially since Debian Maintainers have the good
habit of splitting big packages to accommodate various use cases.

> I have an idea of roughly 20,000 in my head, but cannot remember why I think
> it and it may be vastly out. Nor into which of my two categories the figure
> falls, if by any miracle it is correct.

http://www.debian.org/intro/about mentions "over 29000". aptitude gets
me 43004 binary packages for squeeze (i386, of which contrib 271 and
non-free 583) so those should be source packages:

$ aptitude search ~Astable | wc -l
43004
$ aptitude search ~Astable~scontrib | wc -l
271
$ aptitude search ~Astable~snon-free | wc -l
583

(~s works because the archive component is part of the section name for
packages not in main)

Kind regards,
Andrei
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Andrei POPESCU

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Oct 16, 2012, 7:10:02 AM10/16/12
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On Ma, 16 oct 12, 11:56:34, Jon Dowland wrote:
> This can be answered (by a developer) using UDD -
> http://wiki.debian.org/UltimateDebianDatabase
>
> The answer today is
>
> udd=> select count(*),release from public.packages group by release;
> count | release
> --------+--------------------------
> 2 | wheezy-security
> 272170 | wheezy
> 189517 | squeeze
> 298810 | sid
> 13816 | squeeze-backports
> 8712 | squeeze-security
> 34908 | experimental
> 746 | wheezy-proposed-updates
> 372 | squeeze-updates
> 625 | squeeze-proposed-updates
> (10 rows)

The numbers are too big in my opinion, is this maybe for all
architectures?

> or source packages
>
> udd=> select count(*),release from public.sources group by release;
> count | release
> -------+--------------------------
> 1 | wheezy-security
> 17867 | wheezy
> 14969 | squeeze
> 18854 | sid
> 599 | squeeze-backports
> 207 | squeeze-security
> 1007 | experimental
> 16 | wheezy-proposed-updates
> 6 | squeeze-updates
> 9 | squeeze-proposed-updates
> (10 rows)

Only main?
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Tom Grace

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Oct 16, 2012, 7:10:02 AM10/16/12
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On 16/10/12 11:30, Lisi wrote:
> Approximately, in round terms, how may packages are available in Debian
> (Squeeze?)
>
>From doing:
for i in main contrib non-free; do echo $i:; curl -s
ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/$i/binary-amd64/Packages.bz2 |
bunzip2 -c | grep Package: | sort -u | wc -l ;done

I get:
main:
28128
contrib:
182
non-free:
383

All a bit unscientific, but it might suit your needs


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Lisi

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Oct 16, 2012, 7:10:02 AM10/16/12
to
On Tuesday 16 October 2012 11:46:01 Titanus Eramius wrote:
> On Tue, 16 Oct 2012 11:30:41 +0100
>
> Lisi <lisi....@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello, all!
> > I have searched Wikipedia and the Debian wiki. I have Googled. I am
> > clearly using the wrong search terms, although I tried rewording in
> > sundry different ways.
> >
> > Approximately, in round terms, how may packages are available in
> > Debian (Squeeze?)
> > 1. in main
> > 2. in main, contrib and non-free
> >
> > I have an idea of roughly 20,000 in my head, but cannot remember why
> > I think it and it may be vastly out. Nor into which of my two
> > categories the figure falls, if by any miracle it is correct.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Lisi
>
> Maybe from Synaptic? It lists a total of packages it can fetch in the
> bottom left corner. I have all three archives active + backports,
> testing and unstable and Synaptic reports 43132 packages is available.

Thanks! That is exactly what I wanted to know. I have not got Synaptic
installed, since I prefer the command line for package management. Perhaps
the information is also available in aptitude's n-curses interface. I didn't
think to look. :-( There is also probably a command line way to do it in
either apt-get or aptitude. I just don't know it. :-(

> But the question might be, what's a package, and what's a libary? Just
> my thoughts though.

D'oh! I had thought (or rather, clearly not thought) that for present
purposes that wasn't all that significant. Though come to think of it, that
may be why I had the figure of 20,000 in my head. Applications and not
libraries.

So I asked the wrong question anyway.

Thanks for all the pointers!

Lisi


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Lisi

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Oct 16, 2012, 7:10:02 AM10/16/12
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On Tuesday 16 October 2012 11:55:55 Brian wrote:
> On Tue 16 Oct 2012 at 11:30:41 +0100, Lisi wrote:
> > I have searched Wikipedia and the Debian wiki. I have Googled. I am
> > clearly using the wrong search terms, although I tried rewording in
> > sundry different ways.
> >
> > Approximately, in round terms, how may packages are available in Debian
> > (Squeeze?)
> > 1. in main
> > 2. in main, contrib and non-free
>
> Edit your /etc/apt/sources.list to have only the line
>
> deb <your_mirror> squeeze non-free
>
> Then
>
> apt-get update
>
> and look at the output.
>
> Add "contrib" to the line above and repeat, Do the same with "main" added.
> Do sums.

Thanks!

Lisi


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Andrei POPESCU

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Oct 16, 2012, 7:40:02 AM10/16/12
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On Ma, 16 oct 12, 14:00:10, Andrei POPESCU wrote:

> $ aptitude search ~Astable | wc -l
> 43004
> $ aptitude search ~Astable~scontrib | wc -l
> 271
> $ aptitude search ~Astable~snon-free | wc -l
> 583

Oups, 'stable' will also match 'unstable', so the correct search (also
excluding non-Debian sources) is:

$ aptitude search '~A^stable~ODebian' | wc -l
28875
$ aptitude search '~A^stable~ODebian~scontrib' | wc -l
189
$ aptitude search '~A^stable~ODebian~snon-free' | wc -l
408

My numbers are still a bit bigger than the count from the Packages file,
but don't know why (it doesn't seem to be due to virtual packages).
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Darac Marjal

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Oct 16, 2012, 8:10:01 AM10/16/12
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On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 08:01:59AM -0400, Tom H wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 6:58 AM, Darac Marjal <maili...@darac.org.uk> wrote:
> >
> > According to my reading of the manual:
> >
> > aptitude search '~smain'
> > and
> > aptitude search '~smain|~scontrib|~snon-free'
> >
> > should give you the answers you seek, however, I seem to get 0 for the
> > first and only 626 for the second, so my search-fu is failing me today.
>
> Because "~s" ("?section()") doesn't correspond to main/contrib/non-free.

What does, then?

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Tom H

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Oct 16, 2012, 8:10:01 AM10/16/12
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On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 6:58 AM, Darac Marjal <maili...@darac.org.uk> wrote:
>
> According to my reading of the manual:
>
> aptitude search '~smain'
> and
> aptitude search '~smain|~scontrib|~snon-free'
>
> should give you the answers you seek, however, I seem to get 0 for the
> first and only 626 for the second, so my search-fu is failing me today.

Because "~s" ("?section()") doesn't correspond to main/contrib/non-free.


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Tom H

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Oct 16, 2012, 8:50:02 AM10/16/12
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(Andrei uses this search term in his replies)

"~A" ("?archive()")

You can see the section to which a package belongs ("utils" in this
case) if you request that information when specifying a format for the
output of aptitude or dpkg-query, for example:

[th@localhost:~]$ dpkg-query -W
-f='${Package}\t${Section}\t${Version}\n' util-linux
util-linux utils 2.20.1-5.2
[th@localhost:~]$ aptitude search -F '%p %s %t %v' util-linux
util-linux utils
testing 2.20.1-5.2
util-linux-locales utils
testing <none>
[th@localhost:~]$ aptitude search -F '%p %s %t %v' util-linux\$
util-linux utils
testing 2.20.1-5.2
[th@localhost:~]$


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Brian

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Oct 16, 2012, 9:00:02 AM10/16/12
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On Tue 16 Oct 2012 at 12:06:17 +0100, Lisi wrote:

> On Tuesday 16 October 2012 11:55:55 Brian wrote:
> >
> > Edit your /etc/apt/sources.list to have only the line
> >
> > deb <your_mirror> squeeze non-free
> >
> > Then
> >
> > apt-get update
> >
> > and look at the output.
> >
> > Add "contrib" to the line above and repeat, Do the same with "main" added.
> > Do sums.
>
> Thanks!

Without the faffing about with getting a root prompt and using an
editor:

cat /var/lib/dpkg/available | grep '^Section:' | wc -l
cat /var/lib/dpkg/available | grep '^Section: non-free' | wc -l
cat /var/lib/dpkg/available | grep '^Section: contrib' | wc -l

28,795, 403 and 187 respectively for me.


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Lisi

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Oct 16, 2012, 9:20:02 AM10/16/12
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On Tuesday 16 October 2012 13:59:21 Brian wrote:
> On Tue 16 Oct 2012 at 12:06:17 +0100, Lisi wrote:
> > On Tuesday 16 October 2012 11:55:55 Brian wrote:
> > > Edit your /etc/apt/sources.list to have only the line
> > >
> > > deb <your_mirror> squeeze non-free
> > >
> > > Then
> > >
> > > apt-get update
> > >
> > > and look at the output.
> > >
> > > Add "contrib" to the line above and repeat, Do the same with "main"
> > > added. Do sums.
> >
> > Thanks!
>
> Without the faffing about with getting a root prompt and using an
> editor:
>
> cat /var/lib/dpkg/available | grep '^Section:' | wc -l
> cat /var/lib/dpkg/available | grep '^Section: non-free' | wc -l
> cat /var/lib/dpkg/available | grep '^Section: contrib' | wc -l
>
> 28,795, 403 and 187 respectively for me.

That's terrific! Thanks, Brian.

Thanks all of you for your informative and helpful replies.

Lisi


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Joe

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Oct 16, 2012, 11:20:01 AM10/16/12
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On Tue, 16 Oct 2012 13:59:21 +0100
Brian <ad...@cityscape.co.uk> wrote:

>
> Without the faffing about with getting a root prompt and using an
> editor:
>
> cat /var/lib/dpkg/available | grep '^Section:' | wc -l
> cat /var/lib/dpkg/available | grep '^Section: non-free' | wc -l
> cat /var/lib/dpkg/available | grep '^Section: contrib' | wc -l
>
> 28,795, 403 and 187 respectively for me.
>
>
The first one gives me 926 on an amd64 X-less squeeze server, which is
around the number of installed packages.

sources.list:
deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main non-free contrib
deb-src http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main non-free contrib

deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib
non-free

# squeeze-updates, previously known as 'volatile'
deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ squeeze-updates main contrib
non-free
deb-src http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ squeeze-updates main contrib
non-free



'apt-cache stats' from the same machine gives:

Total package names: 37481 (750 k)
Total package structures: 37481 (2,099 k)
Normal packages: 28432
Pure virtual packages: 390
Single virtual packages: 3261
Mixed virtual packages: 258
Missing: 5140
Total distinct versions: 28904 (2,081 k)
Total distinct descriptions: 28904 (694 k)
Total dependencies: 177309 (4,965 k)
Total ver/file relations: 30947 (743 k)
Total Desc/File relations: 28904 (694 k)
Total Provides mappings: 5838 (117 k)
Total globbed strings: 133 (1,465 )
Total dependency version space: 734 k
Total slack space: 49.2 k
Total space accounted for: 10.1 M

Being X-less, there's no Synaptic, however on my sid workstation,
Synaptic reports '39614 packages listed' as being the sum of stats'
'Normal packages' and 'Mixed virtual packages', which would be 28,690
here.

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Ralf Mardorf

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Oct 16, 2012, 11:40:02 AM10/16/12
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FWIW tons of packages doesn't mean tons of apps etc., since of the
strange policy to split some packages in an insane way, e.g. the jackd
packages are split really insane. Or does any package depend to libjack
without jackd? And if so, why?

There often is the argument that shared libs will keep a system small,
but bad hard dependencies often enlarge a system. On Arch there e.g. is
a dependency to systemd. I use intitscripts, not systemd, but have got
systemd installed. On Debian for example there's a hard dependency to
pulseaudio for some apps, even if it's completely useless.

And FWIW, meta-packages only summarize some other packages, so the count
of packages gives information about big nothing.

2 Cents,
Ralf


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Andrei POPESCU

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Oct 16, 2012, 11:40:02 AM10/16/12
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On Ma, 16 oct 12, 08:01:59, Tom H wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 6:58 AM, Darac Marjal <maili...@darac.org.uk> wrote:
> >
> > According to my reading of the manual:
> >
> > aptitude search '~smain'
> > and
> > aptitude search '~smain|~scontrib|~snon-free'
> >
> > should give you the answers you seek, however, I seem to get 0 for the
> > first and only 626 for the second, so my search-fu is failing me today.
>
> Because "~s" ("?section()") doesn't correspond to main/contrib/non-free.

In theory true, but in practice:

$ apt-cache show nvidia-glx | grep ^Section
Section: non-free/x11

This means a search for contrib or non-free with ~s will succeed, but
not for for main, since packages in main don't advertise the archive
component in the Section field.
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Andrei POPESCU

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Oct 16, 2012, 12:00:02 PM10/16/12
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On Ma, 16 oct 12, 17:34:19, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> FWIW tons of packages doesn't mean tons of apps etc., since of the
> strange policy to split some packages in an insane way, e.g. the jackd
> packages are split really insane. Or does any package depend to libjack
> without jackd? And if so, why?

Why should every application *capable* of outputting to jackd force one
to install jackd?

> There often is the argument that shared libs will keep a system small,
> but bad hard dependencies often enlarge a system. On Arch there e.g. is
> a dependency to systemd. I use intitscripts, not systemd, but have got
> systemd installed. On Debian for example there's a hard dependency to
> pulseaudio for some apps, even if it's completely useless.

Care to provide some examples? Looking through the reverse dependencies
of the package 'pulseaudio' the only strange one is
kde-telepathy-call-ui. If you meant dependency to libpulse, then the
answer is the same as for jackd.

> And FWIW, meta-packages only summarize some other packages, so the count
> of packages gives information about big nothing.

We don't know anything about Lisi's use case, so this is maybe a bit
premature?
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Ralf Mardorf

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Oct 16, 2012, 12:50:02 PM10/16/12
to
On Tue, 2012-10-16 at 18:56 +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> On Ma, 16 oct 12, 17:34:19, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> > FWIW tons of packages doesn't mean tons of apps etc., since of the
> > strange policy to split some packages in an insane way, e.g. the jackd
> > packages are split really insane. Or does any package depend to libjack
> > without jackd? And if so, why?
>
> Why should every application *capable* of outputting to jackd force one
> to install jackd?

Jackd could be a "suggested dependency", if you don't use jackd, why
should the app link against the lib? The app should link against it, as
soon as you configure the app to use jackd and than you need jackd
completely, not only the lib.

> > There often is the argument that shared libs will keep a system small,
> > but bad hard dependencies often enlarge a system. On Arch there e.g. is
> > a dependency to systemd. I use intitscripts, not systemd, but have got
> > systemd installed. On Debian for example there's a hard dependency to
> > pulseaudio for some apps, even if it's completely useless.
>
> Care to provide some examples? Looking through the reverse dependencies
> of the package 'pulseaudio' the only strange one is
> kde-telepathy-call-ui. If you meant dependency to libpulse, then the
> answer is the same as for jackd.

Ok, I only know one GNOME package, but to use GNOME you need this
package.

> > And FWIW, meta-packages only summarize some other packages, so the count
> > of packages gives information about big nothing.
>
> We don't know anything about Lisi's use case, so this is maybe a bit
> premature?

Yesno. I also like to hear about the count of packages, but this
information is nearly useless.

Regards,
Ralf


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Andrei POPESCU

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Oct 16, 2012, 1:20:02 PM10/16/12
to
On Ma, 16 oct 12, 18:44:20, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> >
> > Why should every application *capable* of outputting to jackd force one
> > to install jackd?
>
> Jackd could be a "suggested dependency", if you don't use jackd, why
> should the app link against the lib? The app should link against it, as
> soon as you configure the app to use jackd and than you need jackd
> completely, not only the lib.

As far as I know (not my area of expertise, but I have been struggling
to compile XBMC for my Raspberry Pi recently), such capabilities are
compile time options.

When you compile an application with output capability to jackd and/or
pulseaudio the corresponding library becomes a hard dependency (i.e. the
application may even crash if the library is not installed).

Or would you expect regular users to recompile applications just to
choose between plain alsa, pulseaudio or jackd output?
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Ralf Mardorf

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Oct 16, 2012, 1:30:02 PM10/16/12
to
On Tue, 2012-10-16 at 20:10 +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> On Ma, 16 oct 12, 18:44:20, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> > >
> > > Why should every application *capable* of outputting to jackd force one
> > > to install jackd?
> >
> > Jackd could be a "suggested dependency", if you don't use jackd, why
> > should the app link against the lib? The app should link against it, as
> > soon as you configure the app to use jackd and than you need jackd
> > completely, not only the lib.
>
> As far as I know (not my area of expertise, but I have been struggling
> to compile XBMC for my Raspberry Pi recently), such capabilities are
> compile time options.
>
> When you compile an application with output capability to jackd and/or
> pulseaudio the corresponding library becomes a hard dependency (i.e. the
> application may even crash if the library is not installed).
>
> Or would you expect regular users to recompile applications just to
> choose between plain alsa, pulseaudio or jackd output?

No, compiling shouldn't be needed. This is a discussion we very often
had on jack mailing list, when split packages failed.
I don't know why an app should crash, as long as it doesn't try to
access the missing lib. It might crash, I don't know, but it should be
possible to get an app without jackd support and to load jackd support
as a plugin or something like that. There was a mail about Iceweasel and
language support some minutes ago. All language packages get installed
by default, so they could become one package. Ok, it's possible to
remove them manually, after installing, pff, it's also possible to
delete the files manually after installing ;).



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Andrei POPESCU

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Oct 16, 2012, 1:50:02 PM10/16/12
to
On Ma, 16 oct 12, 19:22:22, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
>
> No, compiling shouldn't be needed. This is a discussion we very often
> had on jack mailing list, when split packages failed.
> I don't know why an app should crash, as long as it doesn't try to
> access the missing lib. It might crash, I don't know, but it should be
> possible to get an app without jackd support and to load jackd support
> as a plugin or something like that.

Yes, but that depends on how the application is written. Some use
plugins (vlc), others have compile time options (mplayer, XBMC).
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Tom H

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Oct 17, 2012, 7:40:03 AM10/17/12
to
On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 11:37 AM, Andrei POPESCU
<andreim...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Ma, 16 oct 12, 08:01:59, Tom H wrote:
>> On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 6:58 AM, Darac Marjal <maili...@darac.org.uk> wrote:
>>>
>>> According to my reading of the manual:
>>>
>>> aptitude search '~smain'
>>> and
>>> aptitude search '~smain|~scontrib|~snon-free'
>>>
>>> should give you the answers you seek, however, I seem to get 0 for the
>>> first and only 626 for the second, so my search-fu is failing me today.
>>
>> Because "~s" ("?section()") doesn't correspond to main/contrib/non-free.
>
> In theory true, but in practice:
>
> $ apt-cache show nvidia-glx | grep ^Section
> Section: non-free/x11
>
> This means a search for contrib or non-free with ~s will succeed, but
> not for for main, since packages in main don't advertise the archive
> component in the Section field.

Thanks for the correction. Although I consider this a cheat or a bonus
depending on the point of view, it's a practical one because AFAIR
dpkg-query doesn't have a "${Archive}" option.


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Osamu Aoki

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Oct 19, 2012, 11:30:01 AM10/19/12
to
On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 11:30:41AM +0100, Lisi wrote:
> Hello, all!
> I have searched Wikipedia and the Debian wiki. I have Googled. I am clearly
> using the wrong search terms, although I tried rewording in sundry different
> ways.
>
> Approximately, in round terms, how may packages are available in Debian
> (Squeeze?)
> 1. in main
> 2. in main, contrib and non-free

See Debian Reference on Debian site which should be displaying such
number scanned last night :-) I just updated.

http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/ch02.en.html#listofdebianarchivearea

area number of packages
main 38064
contrib 231
non-free 508

This is for upcoming wheezy :)

> I have an idea of roughly 20,000 in my head, but cannot remember why I think
> it and it may be vastly out. Nor into which of my two categories the figure
> falls, if by any miracle it is correct.

Off by half

Osamu


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Osamu Aoki

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Oct 19, 2012, 11:40:02 AM10/19/12
to
On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 02:36:43PM +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> On Ma, 16 oct 12, 14:00:10, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
>
> > $ aptitude search ~Astable | wc -l
> > 43004
> > $ aptitude search ~Astable~scontrib | wc -l
> > 271
> > $ aptitude search ~Astable~snon-free | wc -l
> > 583
>
> Oups, 'stable' will also match 'unstable', so the correct search (also
> excluding non-Debian sources) is:
>
> $ aptitude search '~A^stable~ODebian' | wc -l
> 28875
> $ aptitude search '~A^stable~ODebian~scontrib' | wc -l
> 189
> $ aptitude search '~A^stable~ODebian~snon-free' | wc -l
> 408
>
> My numbers are still a bit bigger than the count from the Packages file,
> but don't know why (it doesn't seem to be due to virtual packages).

I think your number is about right for squeeze.

Debian FAQ package number is not scripted. So needs to file bug report
to package.

Osamu


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