Bug#657422: How can I replace the downloader of aptitude with another downloader such as axel?
Hi,
> [ start of apt/aptitude-battle ]
Ask two people and you will get three recommendations.
Trying to be objective, it can be said that the Upgrade-Instructions
say for two releases again that you should use apt-get.
For interactive use: Use whatever you want and suits you best.
After saying this, lets get back to the actual topic:
> Alternative downloaders
Feel free to implement it. It's not as hard as it might sound.
I just question the effective use. Most downloaders either relay on
a placebo effect or depend on the fact that nobody else uses them:
Placebo's can be easily implemented, but who needs that? ;)
Many downloader also didn't implement various interesting features the
inbuilt already has like partial requests or pipelining…
Opening multiple connections to the same server might (!) increases the
speed for you, but only if all others using this server aren't also opening
multiple connections in parallel. If they do, we are back to square one -
expect that now the speed for everyone is even lower as the server has
more "paperwork" to do to handle the requests.
(thats what most of these "faster" downloaders do - cheating…)
Opening connections to different servers is something which can
and should be (and partly is) implemented with the mirror method,
it just needs more work nobody did so far in various parts of APT and
the server/mirror infrastructure in general.
Stuff like torrents can be explored, too, there is even a method for it
with debtorrent - but i guess this method also needs more work.
Long story short: This bug is WAY to general to be ever marked as done,
so i am closing it as it doesn't help to keep it open. If you have a specific
method implemented, feel free to tell us. Requesting here to implement a
specific one is properly not going to work out either, properly better of
to ask the upstreams of apt-fast or whatever why they have chosen to not
constribute to directly APT instead.
I hope this reasoning can be understood - still, thanks for your report!
Everyone trying to help improve debian is welcomed. :)
Best regards
David Kalnischkies
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