Chapter 5. The Debian FTP archives

23

5.8 What are all those directories inside

dists/stable/main

?

Within each of the major directory trees

2

, there are three sets of subdirectories containing index

files.

There's one set of

binary 

something

subdirectories which contain index files for binary

packages of each available computer architecture, for example

binary i386

for packages

which execute on Intel x86 PC machines or

binary sparc

for packages which execute on

Sun SPARCStations.

The complete list of available architectures for each release is available at the release's web

page (

http://www.debian.org/releases/

). For the current release, please see `On what

hardware architectures/systems does Debian GNU/Linux run?' on page

9

.

The index files in binary * are called Packages(.gz) and they include a summary of each bi 

nary package that is included in that distribution. The actual binary packages (for woody and

subsequent releases) reside in the top level

pool

directory.

Furthermore, there's a subdirectory called source/ which contains index files for source pack 

ages included in the distribution. The index file is called Sources(.gz).

Last but not least, there's a set of subdirectories meant for the installation system index

files. In the woody release, these are named

disks 

architecture

; in sarge, they are at

debian installer/binary 

architecture

.

5.9 Where is the source code?

Source code is included for everything in the Debian system. Moreover, the license terms of

most programs in the system require that source code be distributed along with the programs,

or that an offer to provide the source code accompany the programs.

The source code is distributed in the

pool

directory (see `What's in the

pool

directory?' on

the following page) together with all the architecture specific binary directories. To retrieve the

source code without having to be familiar with the structure of the FTP archive, try a command

like

apt get source mypackagename

.

Some packages are only distributed as source code due to the restrictions in their licenses.

Notably, one such package is

pine

, see `Where is pine?' on page

16

for more information.

Source code may or may not be available for packages in the  contrib  and  non free  directo 

ries, which are not formally part of the Debian system.

2

dists/stable/main

,

dists/stable/contrib

,

dists/stable/non free

,

and

dists/unstable/main/

, etc.