[Wolves] Debian apt-get sources.list - again

Aquarius aquarius-lists at kryogenix.org
Fri Mar 26 17:08:38 GMT 2004


sparkes spoo'd forth:
>> Cool, cheers. What I don't get is the "main contrib" stuff. I see 
>> different things written there and I'm not sure what I should have in mine.
>> 
> main is the main bit these packages are supported by the debian maintainers.
> contrib are contributed packages
> and non-free are bits that are nice to have but can't be considered part 
> of debian because of licence issues.

Nearly right :)

Non-free packages are ones that are distributable by Debian but don't
meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines. (Obviously, packages that are
so non-free that they cannot be distributed by Debian appear nowhere at
all in the Debian archive.) Main contains packages that meet the DFSG,
and have all their dependencies in main too. Contrib contains packages
that meet the DFSG but have dependencies on packages outside main. So,
for example, if you released a package which was GPLed but depended on
something in non-free, your package would go into contrib. The Debian
developers are currently debating whether to remove non-free entirely.
Main is "closed", in a mathematical sense, meaning that you can install
any package in main and all its dependencies are also satisfiable
within main; no package in main can depend on anything not in main.

Aq.

-- 
Penelope Pitstop: Ohhh, it's my arch enemy, the Hooded Claw!
The Hooded Claw: Who did you expect? Dick Dastardly?
	   -- The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, "Jungle Jeopardy"



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