Re: does aptitude really need to lock the status database when downloading?
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
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