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apt comments



Here is a list of APT improvements that I can think of... I just upgraded to 
Hamm from a CD, and then installed apt and did the usual 'apt-get update; 
apt-get upgrade -y' and came up with a few improvements.  Note that the 
updating was done with a diald controlled ppp connection over a 28.8 modem.

Apt definitely looks great, though!!! I just got 0.1.6 last night.

Thanks,
Nils.


- on an upgrade, allow the packages to be downloaded and immediately 
installed.  This saves space, and if you're installing over a modem and need 
to switch archives and do an 'update' you don't need to do a clean and start 
downloading all over again.  Maybe 3 options:  The current one (get all, 
install all), section by section (get all in main for example, then 
install), and individual (download one package, then install it, then get 
the next).

- for the HTTP method, it keeps timing out for me.  Can you automatically 
get it to retry? When I ctrl-c the upgrade, and then rerun it, the transfer 
starts at normal speeds again.  an automatic option to retry on a timeout 
(--retry 3 for 3 retries before it gives up, --timeout 45 for a 45 second 
timeout ?) would be really handy for ppp-ers.

- any chance of allowing multiple archives for the same thing?  Say you can 
get main off two sites... if it times out/can't connect to one, it goes to 
the second? This may already be there... I haven't tested that yet.

- allow for a --max-transfers # to be able to set it to transfer only one 
file at a time... handy for modem upgrades.

- allow for some form of --cont-on-error... I tried to install mime-support 
(upgrade, actually) and it failed because of an a2ps conflict.  It then 
exited and didn't configure the remaining upgraded packages it had 
downloaded.  I ran dpkg --pending --configure manually and that worked fine.



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