On Mon, Mar 21, 2016 at 05:19:33PM -0400, Boruch Baum wrote:
> 1] For a day-to-day changing alpha release it makes plenty of sense to
> keep the initial download as small as possible, since so much is
> expected to change as part of the development process.
>
> 2] OTOH, a developer wants to encourage people to test the install and
> the release often, so it makes sense to have an initial iso download
> packed with the stable and large software packages that aren't central
> to the what the distribution is innovating. Any time a user runs a
> second test, she incurs a bandwidth burden of an entire new install.
>
> 3] One complicated solution would be to not destroy
> /var/cache/apt/archive on the target when re-installing. It could be
> done by having the installer suggest to mount that folder on its own
> partition, and then have the installer refer to it at the download stage.

Trusting /var/cache/apt/archive on the target would risk way too many modes
of breakage, let's not go there.

If you're doing frequent installs, you'd better install apt-cacher-ng (or
one of its competitors) on a box on the local network, and use that whenever
asked for a mirror.

The apt source will then be:
deb http://$YOUR_CACHE_BOX:3142/ftp.$COUNTRY.debian.org/debian/
or
deb http://$YOUR_CACHE_BOX:3142/packages.devuan.org/merged

This way you download any package, binary or source, at most once.

--
A tit a day keeps the vet away.