initial work-in-progress code

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+welcome to the README file.
+
+--------------------
+setup instructions
+--------------------
+
+required software:
+
+python
+python-cheetah
+python-pygments
+python-debian
+(optional) reprepro
+something providing an httpd
+
+first, you need a partial source archive, with the .dsc, diff.gz, Release,
+and Sources.gz files available.  there's a sample config in the subdir 
+./reprepro, if you don't have one handy.  currently it just fetches a
+few packages for testing, and it also needlessly fetches the orig.tar.gz
+files too, just because i don't know reprepro very well.
+
+so, you have your source archive available, and installed somewhere.
+next set up a web server, and configure it to serve up the "application" from
+wherever, using standard Alias or VirtualHost/DocumentRoot stuff.
+
+next, edit the main python script, gen-patch-info.py.  there's a Conf
+class which contains all the configuration stuff that you will need to
+modify to get the script to run and generate pages as it should.
+
+--------------------
+overall design/scheme
+--------------------
+
+currently the plan is to generate static information based on the info
+available in a standard source archive (thus hopefully eliminating the need for 
+some kind of complicated tracking infrastructure).  The in-between stage
+may involve a lightweight database (i.e. sqlite) for quick/efficient handling
+of source package metadata, but in the current scheme it is all handled
+on the fs directly or within classes.  the database shouldn't be necessary
+in the "final output", which is currently static.  of course the right is
+reserved for later additions that include dynamic content and/or
+interaction (posting comments to a patch, fetching other data from external 
+sources)
+
+the webpages are generated from cheetah based templates in ./templates.  if the content is later dynamically generated the templates may still be useful.
+