[Synaptic-devel] Newbie qstn: repository on a local hard disk?

[Ari Torhamo]

Hello!

I have been using Linux (Mandrake and Fedora) for a few months now,
after using Windows for several years. I don't know how to programm and
I wouldn't call myself a power user, so I'm glad to find that I can do
so much with Linux using only GUI-tools.

I often use Synaptic to install and upgrade software (also default Yum
for system upgrades). Using Synaptic for these tasks feels rather simple
and intuitive. I have had some problems too, many of which relate to
documentation. There are some things that I know I should be able to do
with Synaptic, but I don't know how.

One of these things is installing software which resides on my own hard
disk. It's mentioned in the Synaptic manual that repositories can be
located on a local hard disk. I tried hard to make Synaptic to see a
directory on my hard disk as a repository, but I failed. What I tried to
do, was to add a path to the directory in question in a field named
"URI" in the "Repositories" window. When I clicked "OK", nothing new
ever appeared in the repository list. I tried to write the path in
several different ways, but nothing worked. I even tried to search the
web for several hours for the answer and did find a couple of people
asking the same question, but they were just guided to do the thing
using command line tools. I realize that it may just be some simple
trivial thing, which I don't see, but anyway I'm stuck. (In the future
I'll propably have the same problem with optical disks.)

It would be great if someone on this list could help me with this. I
also think it might be a great idea to add this information to the
Synaptic manual. It may sometimes be suprisingly difficult and time
consuming for a newbie to search for this kind of information in the
web. It's often difficult even to understand the answers.

Thank's for the developers for Synaptic - I really like to use it. If
anyone is interested, I might send more questions, comments or
suggestions from a newbie perspective in the future.

kind regards,
Ari Torhamo