Bug#775163: apt pigs out in /var, particularly with multi-arch

[Elliott Mitchell <ehem+debian@m5p.com>]

Package: apt
Version: 0.9.7.9+deb7u7

I've ended up examining how much space programs are using in /var, and
APT is the top pig, using close to half of /var as /var/lib/apt/lists,
one factor does appear to be exasperating this, `dpkg` has 5 foreign
architectures.

Trying a few compression methods:

426248  lists
114580  lists.gz
90868   lists.bz2
85648   lists.lzma
86532   lists.xz

Nearly all of this space is being used for the Packages files.  Merely
compressing them would be a rather major improvement.  The main Debian
testing file is the biggest of these.


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