X-* fields in .sources file?

Wouter Verhelst <[email protected]> Sat, 7 Feb 2026 19:34:53 +0100
Newsgroups gmane.linux.debian.apt.devel
Organization The Debian Project, http://www.debian.org/
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Hi all,

Over time, extrepo has grown a few options that can change the resulting
.sources file that is generated. Since extrepo does not store that
option anywhere, that does mean that if you ever run "extrepo update"
later, you need to remember to pass those extra options manually, too.

This is, obviously, not ideal, and while I could write my own config
file somewhere to write any options that were used in generating the
.sources file, I would like to explore the possibility, first, of
storing that in the .sources file itself. But I'm not going to do that
without your opinion on that subject :)

The way I was thinking of doing this was to add a single field to the
.sources file, called "X-Extrepo-Options" or some such, wherein I set
the command-line parameters that were used to generate the present
configuration file, so that an argument-less "extrepo update" would be
able update the .sources file as though those options were passed on the
command line.

How would you feel about that? Would that be OK? If not, that's fine,
there are other options, but it'd be easier for me if I could do it that
way.

Thanks for your input,

-- 
"I never had a C in history!"
"Yeah, but there was so much less of it when you were my age!"
 -- Joe Brockmeier recounting a conversation with his father, cfgmgmtcamp 2026, Ghent