On Fri, Feb 04, 2011 at 01:21:07AM +0100, Eduard Bloch wrote: > #include <hallo.h> > * Stanislav Maslovski [Fri, Feb 04 2011, 03:10:54AM]: > > Hi debian-devel, > > > > I wanted to ask this for quite a long time: Does aptitude (I think > > apt-get does the same) really have to lock "the status database area" > > when _downloading_ packages? > > > > For example, I am running an update on a slow connection and want to > > uninstall or install with dpkg a few packages while the others are > > being downloaded. Should not this be possible? I understand that there > > can be a situation that a dependency could be affected by such an > > action, but is not it easy to check for this right before unpacking? > > If you want to have that level of control, why don't you just check it > manually? Use --download-only with apt-get (no dpkg locking this way) > and when it's done, use apt-get without it to install the packages after > making sure that there is no dpkg active anymore.
This is possible, however, it is an extra busy work for a user. In any case, I think that holding a lock only for downloading is an overkill and this can be relaxed. As Julian Taylor mentioned, there is also another side of the same problem: aptitude itself can be improved so that it is able to download and unpack in parallel. If it were doing this then the lock would be justified. -- Stanislav -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110204085722.GA6573@kaiba.homelan