RFE: keep the three latest versions of a package

[Rolf Leggewie]

Binary package hint: apt-cacher-ng

apt-proxy which has an option to keep the three latest versions of a package (until they have not been accessed in the cache for a configurable number of days). I think is quite a nice thing to be protected from possible regressions in a package. It would be nice if apt-cacher-ng did the same.

[Eduard Bloch (edi-gmx)]

Counter question: how often did this feature really save your ass? One time? Zero times?

My opinion is that relying on such mechanisms results in automatic creation of waste much more often than it helps someone. Therefore, I let the user purge manually; this can happen at certain moments where the archive is not borken but that moment is user's choice.

[Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)]

I think it would be quite a few times where I appreciated this feature in apt-proxy which I was using up until recently. I've seen many regressions over time. I am battling with one in xorg which produces complete freezes of the complete machine at inopportune times, for example.

But I also don't want to overemphasize the importance of this bug. It would be nice to have. Both Ubuntu and Debian keep an archive of any and all the binary packages they ever released. http://snapshot.debian.net is fairly easy to use, still, not many people know about it. The same thing for ubuntu is quite complicated. -> http://blog.leggewie.org/?p=24

If this is wontfix from your POV, I can certainly accept that. It would be nice to have, but not a dealbreaker.

[Daniel Hahler (blueyed)]

For what it's worth, I think this should be "Won't Fix", too - archives are available from the internet and the case that a system is too much broken to get to them, is very unlikely (and a package archive might not help then even).

[Eduard Bloch (edi-gmx)]

This feature was added in 0.6.7 (Debian Sid), with configurable count as "KeepExtraVersions" parameter.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package apt-cacher-ng - 0.6.8-2

---------------
apt-cacher-ng (0.6.8-2) unstable; urgency=medium

  * Added libwrap0-dev to Build-Depends (closes: #646300)
  * Added newer dpkg to Pre-Depends (for xz compression support)

 -- Eduard Bloch <email address hidden> Sun, 23 Oct 2011 00:45:56 +0200