Re: Streaming Package Installation for dpkg/APT
Hi!
On Wed, 2011-01-05 at 09:55:29 +0530, Ishan Jayawardena wrote:
> I would like to know about the streaming package installation for
> dpkg/APT. I read about this from last year's summer of code ideas list
> of Debian [1], and found it interesting. I also found that it had not
> been taken by any of the applicants, and, therefore, I would like to
> work on it this summer.
You might want to talk with the people involved in that proposal, as I
don't think/remeber it ever being discussed on this list. CCed them now.
CCed Lars too which AFAIR mentioned something like this to me at some
point?
> Is there any ongoing development related to that idea?
I don't know of any.
> There is a description given in [1] and apart from that, are there
> any concerns of it? I would like to know your ideas and suggestions
> about it, to proceed. Please let me know if you have something to
> share with me, I'm looking forward to your feedback.
Michael and Simon might be able to fill the blanks.
About concerns, the one that comes to mind immediately is that dpkg
treats the packages as the basic units of operation, when invoked it
first parses the control files for all provided packages, and then
operates on them, reordering if needed, bailing out if dependencies
cannot be satisfied, breaking cycles, etc. If the packages are not on
disk, and they are streamed to dpkg, then it might not be able to
operate properly. Which might not be an unsurmountable issue, but then
I've not thought this through too much...
Something which I guess would speed up the installation process could
be to just make apt download the packages in self-contained batches,
which can be unpacked/configured independently. This would also not
really need any change in dpkg AFAICS. This way the installation
process could start sooner than having to wait for the whole thing to
get downloaded. It does not remove the need to store those batched
packages on disk, but still.
> [1] http://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2010/StreamingPackageInstall
thanks,
guillem
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