Re: Bug#31539: apt: Wishlist: x/N status indicator during downloads

[servis@purdue.edu]

*- Jason Gunthorpe wrote about "Re: Bug#31539: apt: Wishlist: x/N status indicator during downloads"
> 
> On Wed, 6 Jan 1999, Brian Servis wrote:
> 
>> Package: apt
>> Version: 0.1.9
>> 
>> Just a simple wishlist item for the apt download status.  It would be 
>> nice if the status showed the number of packages remaining to be 
>> downloaded.  The percent indicators are not always a reliable form
>> of information, escpecially if there are a few large packages as well
>> as a large number of small packages.
> 
> Eh?
> 
> The percent meter is the MOST reliable information, it shows the
> percentage of bytes that have been recived, number of packages is not
> really a usefull statistic IMHO
> 
> Jason
> 

The reason I suggested this is that as I was doing an update today of a
bunch of packages(24) most were fairly small(<100k) while a few were
VERY large(the xemacs-support* ones at around 12M).  After the large
files had downloaded the percent done was around 98% but I still had
about 10-15 packages to download.  Yes the percent meter may be the
most reliable but it does not give the user any indication of how many
packages out of the current set are left/have been done.  This is
especially true when a very large number of packages are being upgraded.
It is more of a user friendly information item rather than an actual
indicator of how much time is left, that is why I expressed it as a
wishlist item. 

To me having the number of packages would be informative if at 98% I
have 8/24 packages and still have say 30m of download left compared to
98% with 21/24 and 4m left.  The first senario would quickly let me know
that there were a few large sized packages mixed in with a bunch of
small ones as compared to the second case were I would see that only a
few small packages are left.  

Thanks,
-- 
Brian 
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Mechanical Engineering                                bservis@usa.net
Purdue University                   http://www.ecn.purdue.edu/~servis
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