Dear Maintainer,
currently debootstrap fails to work with APT repositories that have
arch:all split out exclusively into a separate Packages file, instead
of having arch:all merged into every arch:any Packages file in archive
metadata.
APT has already been supporting the new scheme for multiple releases,
so it would be nice if debootstrap supported it too (so far, it is the
only tool I found that doesn't do that). This would enable us in
PureOS to use the new APT repository style, as well as potentially
other derivatives and Debian itself in future as well.

The APT repository format (for both styles and the current
"compatibility mode" that the Debian archive runs on) is described
here: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianRepository/Format#Architectures

I attached a patch which implements support for this feature in
debootstrap. So far it has been working find for bootstrapping both
Debian (with the "compatibility" archive metadata mode) as well as a
PureOS scratch repository which uses the newer-style APT repository
mode.

You can also review this patch as MR @ Salsa:
https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/debootstrap/-/merge_requests/92

Thank you for considering!
I've set this bug as "normal", since I do consider bringing
debootstrap on-par with what features APT supports for a while as
important, but feel free to reduce it to "whishlist" priority if you
think that is more appropriate for a feature request like this.

With kind regards,
    Matthias Klumpp