Sometime between the start and the end, there&#x27;s often a mandatory burn it all down step required to more fully satisfy either (2) or (3). Watching hundreds of MB of data getting written to my HD for an apt-get update makes me 90% certain that Debian indeed needs to burn it all down.<p>To their credit, they started really early. And burning it all down seems to be an increasingly better option for purely extrinsic reasons; the late mover advantage keeps increasing, and better and better options keep emerging. A LMDB-based refactor perhaps? This is probably a pipe dream, alas: Debian developers must have a hundred different programs that all build and extend forward the original &quot;make it work&quot; technology, to make it survivable. And that&#x27;s really my final counter to your cute linear notion of ongoing improvement: the mold is set, and there are dozens of things bound up in what has happened.