`distribute' program makes doing the tasks related to creating a CD set for
distribution of a collection of packages easier. The tasks include:
laying out the CDs filesystem (splitting the large amount of packages into
several discs etc.), preparing the collection for use by APT
(indexing), creating ISO images and recording the discs.

Periodical updates to the initially distributed collection can be issued with
help of `distribute'.

This utility will be useful to you, if you have a collection of
packages on one machine (probably a mirror or a development site), and
you want to bring them to your home computer (and install them
to/upgrade the system there), or if you want to give them to a friend,
or if you would like to distribute the collection of packages for some
other purpose.

Particularly, if you have an ALT-Sisyphus-based system at home,
and if you want to upgrade it to the current state of Sisyphus, you can
download them to another machine, use `distribute' utility there to create a
CD set, come home and use APT to upgrade.

You don't need to be your system's administrator to use `distribute': you
can extract the contents to your home directory and use it (by setting
apropriate P_ROOT). For distributing Sisyphus, have a look at
/etc/distribute/tasks/Sisyphus.

• Ivan Zakharyaschev
• Vitaly Lipatov

• distribute