On Fri, May 25, 2001 at 11:39:23AM +0200, andrea gelmini wrote: > On Fri, May 25, 2001 at 10:32:41AM +0200, Michael Neuffer wrote: > > > There are more then enough machines around that already have > > problems with the package management. Machines that must run > > with 16 or maybe 8 MB of memory (or even less) with an 386sx/16 > > CPU or similar. > do you really install useless and heavy, for ram and cpu, kde > themes on such machines?
No, but those packages need to be parsed and checked for dependencies by pkg etc... This takes lots of cycles and lots of RAM on _all_ machines, regardless of wether those packages are actually installed. Using dselect on a P75/24 MB is a true PITA, In the past I've used a script that fingered the machine every minute and raised an alarm if it didn't respond. I ran it when upgrading that machine so I knew when (not if) it crashed (ok, not really crashed, but unusable). On my 386 I don't even try to do automatic installs anymore. I use dpkg to install packages one by one. My solution to this is to split the package archives. Currently a typical /etc/apt/sources.list looks like this: deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US stable/non-US main contrib non-free deb http://security.debian.org stable/updates main contrib non-free Why not add a few more directories. eg KDE, Gnome, Dutch translations like this: deb http://http.us.debian.org/KDE stable main contrib non-free or deb http://GNOME.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free By removing such a line from /etc/apt/sources.lists my machine my machine wouldn't even know about all those packages, which would mean a significant speed-up. Another (small) benefit would be that I don't have to download package information about packages I don't want to install anyway. The difference would be just a few K per apt-get update, which is completly neglectible for my broad-band connection. But it certainly matters to the server and modem users. To implement this not a single line of code needs to be written. Apt is designed to do stuff like this. A utillity to add/remove lines to /etc/apt/sources.list would be nice, but IIRC such a tool does exist. Dselect->Access also has a (very ugly IMHO) interface to this. The only disadvantage I can think of is that when a new section is added apt/dselect won't know about it until it's added to sources.list . I've made up two solutions to this but they are a bit ugly. I'll take KDE for an example and show which steps need to be made to install KDE when a KDE section is added.: solution 1: Every time a new section is added the sources.list managment tool needs to be updated. To add KDE: -apt-get update -upgrade sources.list tool -use the tool/dselect->access to add a line for KDE to sources.list -apt-get update -use dselect/apt-get install to install KDE packages pro: -everything can be done with existing software con: -many users won't even realize KDE exists until they figure out how to add entry to sources.list as it doesn't show up in dselect->select solution 2: use packages to add lines to sources.list To add KDE: -apt-get update -use dselect to install task-kde upon installation task-kde will add a line to sources.list pointing to the KDE archives -apt-get update -install KDE packages pro: -the user doens't need to know about /etc/apt/sources.list, when a new section is added it shows up with other new packages and the user can decide wether or not he likes to use this section. con: -when taks-kde is installed KDE isn't until apt-get update/upgrade is run a second time -- Casper Gielen [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- People just generally like to disagree. Bill Joy
