Re: [Emdebian] apt-get on embedded systems
+++ Neil Williams [2009-04-21 20:01 +0100]:
> On Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:33:57 +0200
> Hector Oron <hector.oron@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Are there any plans to create/modify an apt-get suitable for embedded
> > systems? I mean without that much perl dependencies and without that
> > oversized apt cache.
>
> As far as the size of the apt cache is concerned, Grip has that problem
> solved - filtering the archive.
That does help enormously, but only so long as you can operate without
Debian itself. As soon as you need one package from debian that
implies a full debian package list/cache download. On my grip systems
doing 'apt-get update' makes my 56Mb initial install become a 120 MB
install. That's almost double the list just for package lists, and
caches. Just storing the packages file zipped would be a major
improvement (it apears not to be) - maybe there is already an option
for that. Makes it even slower, but maybe that's OK. Not keeping the
.bin cache files presumably also works (just slower). (or putting them
in tmpfs so they are lost on reboot). Maybe we could arrange to to
grip-style description filtering on downloaded lists?
Thee are definately changes which would allow the correct behaviour
and functionality of apt/dpkg without _quite_ so much space
requirement. Usualy at the expense of speed, but actually, filtering
the package file probably makes it faster overall. Even gzipping might
depending on relaitve speeds of flash and CPU.
Wookey
--
Principal hats: iEndian - Balloonboard - Toby Churchill - Emdebian
http://wookware.org/
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