Re: dselect (or apt) wish list

[George Bonser <grep@shorelink.com>]

On Wed, 11 Nov 1998, Jiri Baum wrote:

> Hello Zack Brown <zbrown@lynx.neu.edu>,
> 
> > I suggest that, by default, dependencies should be downloaded
> > before the files that depend upon them. 
> 
> Any particular reason?

I can think of a good one that really bugs me. Using the apt method from
dselect, if a single package fails to download the none of the packages
are installed. I have recently had trouble getting packages from
non-us.debian.org because the transfer sometimes times out. If the
packages were downloaded in dependancy order, apt could stop the transfer
at a failure and install all packages retrieved before the failure with a
high degree of confidance that they will install.

I hate the current behavior of having nothing install unless everything is
downloaded.


George Bonser

The Linux "We're never going out of business" sale at an FTP site near you!