Hello Dave,
Dave Martin [2010-08-09 10:47 +0100]:
Hence my thought of having a tarball per package. I'm still a bit worried about a post-unpack hook changing the package files to be different from dpkg's file list for the package -- that could cause safety problems. Is there a way to tell dpkg that the hook changed the files? (May just be my ignorance)
If the hook updates /var/lib/dpkg/info/<package>.{list,md5sum} accordingly, it should be alright.
Ah, I misunderstood. I was thinking about compressing {,src}pkgcache.bin instead of the package lists... Ignore my comments on that ;)
srcpkgcache.bin can be dropped entirely. pkgcache.bin can be dropped for most operations [1], but synaptics doesn't work without one [2]. So pkgcache.bin needs to stay as it is for the time being.
Thanks,
Martin
[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReducingDiskFootprint#Disable%20apt%20caches [2] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/synaptic/+bug/596898