Bug#43724: experimental patch for very much faster dpkg -R

[Joey Hess <joey@kitenet.net>]

> > Below is a patch against Ian's CVS tree which can massively accelerate
> > the `dpkg -iGROEB' call from the disk method of dselect (and
> > elsewhere).
> > 
> > It works by parsing filenames to determine whether it can skip
> > particular files, instead of looking inside them.  When most of the
> > packages on your system are up to date, it leads to an enormous
> > speedup, as instead of opening and parsing thousands of *.deb files it 
> > just does a bit of work on the filenames.

Doesn't anyone else feel this is a hack? Look at how apt does it (parse a
Packages file, and use that info to get package versions and decide what
needs to be updated, and then look at only those files) for a much better
method.

Basically, no one in their right mind has used the disk method of dselect in
years. dpkg -iGROEB is known to fail in many ways, just ask Jason Gunthorpe.

-- 
see shy jo