Smart: downloading packages (was: Call for testing: upcoming smart 0.42)

[Pascal Bleser]

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(cross-posting on the smart list)

Klaus Kaempf wrote:
> * Martin Schlander <suse at linuxin.dk> [Jun 15. 2006 11:38]:
>> - All packages are downloaded before installation - if a download or a package 
>> fails everything stops - you can't just skip that one - but have to sort out 
>> the issue before you can continue.
> 
> One probably has to group packages into 'dependency groups'. If a package
> of one group fails download, the whole group will fail. But this shouldn't
> influence the other groups.
> 
> Not that easy to get right.

Indeed. And you often have dependencies that are needed by more than one
package.

Imagine you install the packages moo and shmoo, and both require libblah
You'd have two "dependency groups":
- - moo
  `-> requires: libblah
- - shmoo
  `-> requires: libblah

Not impossible to do, but you'd have to
- - download libblah
- - download moo
- - install moo + libblah in one RPM transaction
- - not download/install libblah because you already did
- - download shmoo
- - install shmoo in one RPM transaction

Well, smart considers a "commit" to be a single transaction and hence,
it first downloads everything to make sure the transaction will be able
to proceed as a whole (unless you specify "--stepped").
That approach has advantages and drawbacks ;)

And as Christoph wrote, there's "--stepped" for the CLI and shell
interfaces (which is not available in the GUI).

Maybe the solution would just be to
- - provide a "stepped" boolean option in the GUI
- - a persistent "stepped" option, to set the default mode to "stepped" if
that's what you prefer

Doesn't sound too hard to do.

cheers
- --
  -o) Pascal Bleser     http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
  /\\ <pascal.bleser at skynet.be>       <guru at unixtech.be>
 _\_v The more things change, the more they stay insane.
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