Re: `du' control files

[Joey Hess <joey@kitenet.net>]

Nicolás Lichtmaier wrote:
> 
>  What would be it use? Well... for installed packages you may just perform a
> 'du -c $(/var/lib/dpkg/info/package.list)'.
>  When faced with this argument people said: "ok.. but wht about uninstalled
> poackages? Deity (when it finally descends to the earth) would be able to
> scan the tar file to extract this "du" control file!" If this program has to
> scan the tar to see if the program fits in the HD... why can't it do a "dpkg
> -c package.deb"?.

Because that requires parsing the entire tar file, which requires gunzipping
it all, an operation which can take minutes for large packages (on my p-166):

joey@kite:/var/mirror/debian/main/binary-i386/x11>time dpkg -c
xbooks_3.3.1-2.deb >/dev/null
21.40user 2.35system 0:25.32elapsed 93%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (4573major+96minor)pagefaults 0swaps

-- 
see shy jo