james(a)eecs.ukans.edu (Jerry James) writes:
 Then you would want to scan for duplicate package names, and just
keep
 the one with the highest version number.  That way, you would get a list
 of whatever your FTP server actually has.  Does this approach have any
 merit? 
It does as an extra mechanism. However I don't think you can get rid
of the index. You would lose the descriptions and the possibility to
add run-time 'requires at some point in time.
Jan