[gccsdk] 'Raspberry Pi' package index?

I've been doing some work trying to recompile things in the riscos.info
packages archive to be ARMv7 safe, so that they're suitable for running on
Raspberry Pi with alignment exceptions on. It's still unclear what
exception state RPi will be shipped with.

Currently the RPi distro from ROOL is shipping with a copy of PackMan which
points at the RiscPkg.org archive. Most of that isn't ARMv7 safe, and
Graham isn't good at replying to emails.

So I have a proposal. On riscos.info we currently have a package index
http://www.riscos.info/packages/pkg/autobuilt

What I'd like to suggest is creating a new index called
http://www.riscos.info/packages/pkg/raspberrypi

This is merely a new index file that runs in parallel with the existing.
The copy of PackMan shipped with RPi uses this as the default index.
This means:

1. Existing riscos.info packages can be tested on RPi before putting in the
index
2. Potentially external packages (eg NetSurf) can be linked
from here via a cron job and filtering script. The packages would stay on
their home servers; the index file simply uses an absolute URL
3. The same for riscpkg.org, which runs on Graham's home ADSL and would be
DDoSed if more than a few people use it at once
4. It enables other people to push out new packaged software to the RPi
which we won't have time to add to the official disc image (which will be
frozen in a week or two)


Note that Raspberry Pi is something of a special case, which is why I'm
trying to ensure a good user experience given existing infrastructure and
limited time. I don't, in general, think that machine- or
architecture-specific index files are a good idea, but that such things
should be indicated as part of the packaging information.

So, thoughts?

Theo

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