Bug#55044: Simultaneous download, unpack and delete option for small hard drives

[Adam C Powell IV <hazelsct@mit.edu>]

Package: apt
Version: 0.3.15
Severity: wishlist

Greetings,

I've installed or upgraded on a couple of machines with small hard
drives or root/var partitions, and apt's behavior of downloading all
packages before unpacking anything is most annoying.  I usually end up
making a list of packages to upgrade/install, and then doing "apt-get
install" on each of them, then remove the archives, until there is
enough room to get all of the packages into /var/cache.

It's funny- for 99% of its functionality, /var doesn't need to be
anywhere near as big as it needs to for apt.  Likewise for root, which
/var is placed in by default when there are just two partitions.  So why
does the apt package cache go in /var?

Would it at all be possible to add an option to download and unpack
simultaneously, or download in chunks of packages?  Alternatively, could
the apt package cache go in /usr, so /var or root doesn't have to be
massively inflated just to handle the packages?

Thanks,
--
      Adam Powell                     http://lyre.mit.edu/~powell/
      Thomas B. King Assistant Professor of Materials Engineering
      77 Massachusetts Ave. Rm. 4-117         Phone (617) 452-2086
      Cambridge, MA 02139 USA                   Fax (617) 253-5418