Re: Bug#185424: base-config: Should display progress bar while installing packages
On Fri, Jul 29, 2005 at 11:55:15PM +0100, Colin Watson wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 07:24:51PM +0200, Michael Vogt wrote:
> > I put some code into apt that should make it possible to get usefull
> > install progress reports. It's in
> > michael.vogt@ubuntu.com--2005/apt--progress-reporting--0 [1]
> >
> > If the apt options: "APT::Status-Fd" is set, apt will send status
> > reports to that fd. The status fd reports have the following format:
> >
> > status:pkgname:TotalPercentage:action-description
>
> I've tested this (with the accompanying one-line patch to aptitude where
> it calls DoInstall()), and after a conversation with Michael in which we
> fixed up some minor issues it now works fine. Having it in mainline apt
> soon would be fantastic.
I've implemented a first cut at the base-config code for this (although
in Ubuntu base-config which uses aptitude rather than tasksel, so it
would take a small change to port it to Debian; however I've made it
fairly generic so I don't expect it to be difficult), which I'm testing
at the moment.
There's one considerable snag though. While Michael's
apt--progress-reporting--0 branch reports installation progress nicely,
it doesn't report download progress at all. This is rather a showstopper
for base-config on netinst installs, for instance; it just sits at 0%
for ages. Is there any chance that apt could do something a bit like
debootstrap, where it reports the progress through various stages
(preparation?, download/retrieval, installation) in turn, and the
calling code gets to munge these together into a unified progress bar if
it wants to do so?
> I then intend to use the debconf passthrough frontend so that I can have
> a frontend displaying the progress bar but also display any debconf
> questions asked by packages. This should incidentally allow both
> base-config/lib/menu/pkgsel and tasksel to be substantially simplified.
I've tested this and the general approach works, although unfortunately
I think the simplifications I had in mind may not be possible. The new
DEBCONF_DB_REPLACE feature in debconf 1.4.55 is necessary to make it
work.
> We need to implement support in debconf for being a passthrough UI
> agent. Oops. Fortunately this shouldn't take too long.
I did this in debconf 1.4.53.
Cheers,
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@debian.org]
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