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Re: Diety UI draft



Martin Alonso Soto Jacome wrote:
> 
> Behan Webster <behanw@verisim.com> wrote:
> > Brandon Mitchell wrote:
> > >
> > > 1) If you ask to do an ftp install, and it needs to download a huge
> > > amount of files, will diety prevent you from filling up the partition
> > > /var/lib/dpkg/ftp/debian (sorry if this is wrong, I'm not at my box).
> > > Also, can it warn you if it gets too close to doing this.  Also, a
> > > gracefull recovery in the event that you do fill up the harddrive would
> > > be nice.
> >
> > These are both implementation details that will need to be tackled
> > eventually, but are not covered by the UI spec.  I will pass these
> > requests on to the proper people on the deity team.
> 
> I'm not so sure.  Knowing the amount of space to install the set of
> selected packages would be very useful for deciding what to include
> and what not to include in a given installation.  One of the biggest
> problems with the current dselect is that you cannot figure out how
> much disk space is going to be needed by the current selections, so
> it's easy to fill up the hard drive without even noticing it.
> 
> I think it should be a concern of the user interface to provide some
> kind of feedback about space comsuption of the installation.  Many
> of us (specially the newbies) would appreciate that a lot.

Perhaps we are talking about two different things.

It sounds like you're concerned about how much space it will take
to install the currently selected packages.  There is already a
guage of how much space is available and how much space your
current package selections will take on the selection screen
status bar.  Please read:

    http://www.verisim.com/~behanw/deity/deity-ui_0.10.html#sel_status

I was under the impression Brandon was talking about problems with
downloaded deb files filling up your partition before they were
installed.  What I was trying to say that although this surely is
a problem, it is just an implementation not a UI problem.  The
implementation should surely try to minimize downloaded remote deb
files filling up a local filesystem.

I can see several solutions to this implementation problem:

1) Include the size of all downloaded deb files in the "needed space"
     count on the status bar.
  PRO: It means downloading remote files will not fill you local
        filesystem.
  CON: It means that you're needed space is artificially high.
       It is a hack.

2) Intelligently install packages to the system as you download them
     (i.e. download deb, install it, then delete it.)
  PRO: It means downloading remote files will not fill you local
        filesystem.
  CON: You still need space enough for one package.

The thing is that every UNIX system needs a certain amount of
operating disk space.  You can not expect to run a UNIX system
with little to no avaiable disk space.  There should almost always
be enough avaliable disk space to do at lease option #2 above (unless
perhaps you're installing something like xbooks! 8) )

I repeat though, the UI has nothing to do with this implementation
detail.

I will pass this problem on to the appropriate person in the deity
team.

Thank you for your question,

Behan

-- 
Behan Webster     mailto:behanw@verisim.com
+1-613-224-7547   http://www.verisim.com/


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