Re: What do you wish for in an package manager?
"Dwayne C . Litzenberger" wrote:
> I'm starting work on a new linux package manager. The idea is to be able to
> replace rpm, dpkg, apt, dselect (backend) with one,written mostly from scratch
> and designed to be as simple (code, not features) and clean as possible. For
> now, the work will be strictly academic, but if it works out, it may evolve
> into future standard package manager.
I'm only familiar with dselect so I guess the new apt stuff might
support some of this, but I haven't heard about any of it, so I'll
include it here.
Firstly, pipeline installation would be very useful. This means:
- you install a package as soon as it downloads, while downloading
another package
- you continue to download and install while a debconf screen is waiting
for the user
- if my apt download was terminated halfway through and I have no
internet time left, I would still get to install my fully downloaded
packages without messing around with dpkg and trying to work out the
dependencies manually
This should make installation faster and better.
Secondly, the ability to specify higher priorites for certain packages
you really want to download, which will download before the lower
priorities. Often I want to promote certain packages, because they're
new or have important bugfixes or new features I want to see ASAP.
--
Matthew Tuck: Software Developer & All-Round Nice Guy
My experience is that in general, if there's jobs programming
in it, it's not worth programming in.
Ultra Programming Language Project: http://www.box.net.au/~matty/ultra/
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