Re: does aptitude really need to lock the status database when downloading?
On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 6:57 AM, Stanislav Maslovski
<stanislav.maslovski@gmail.com> wrote:
[...]
>> 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 far as I can tell (and please correct me if I'm wrong), when you
do, say, an "apt-get upgrade", apt prepares an upgrade "plan" that
uses a given set of packages. If apt wouldn't lock and parallel to
that you do an "apt-get install", for example, the original "plan"
might not be valid anymore (e.g., new "Breaks" or "Conflicts" were
introduced). So a new plan would have to be created, the user would
have to be asked for confirmation again. Doesn't sound that great.
> 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.
As far as I know, apt-get already downloads in parallel. Not sure
about aptitude.
Regards,
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