On Wednesday 20 March 2013, Niels Thykier wrote: > > I would like to take the opportunity to invite anyone interested > > to join de...@lists.debian.org (cc'ed) and discuss if and how we > > could work on integrating apt-file more closely with other apt-* > > tools. > > > > > > > > I (and I guess many other users) would be pleased if we could > > reach a point in which "apt-get update" (or its countless > > alternative ways) would update indeed all data I requested to be > > downloaded as a user rather than remembering to run also > > "apt-file update" (and "debtags update" and and and). > > > > > > Indeed that would be great. Maybe packages like apt-file could > install a file in some directory APT reads saying "Please download > X with updates" ?
That would be the perfect solution. Unfortunately, it would also mean that apt's pdiff implementation would need to be rewritten because it is so inefficient. AFAICS, with N the number of lines in the Contents or Packages file, and M the number of diffs, apt currently scales like O(N*M) while apt-file's implementation scales more like O(M+N). Since the content files are much larger than the packages files, this would be an even bigger issue with apt-file than it is with apt. In order to get decent performance, one really must download all diffs and apply them at the same time. Also, it is not possible to keep the whole Contents file in memory (though I don't know if apt does that). But of course, if someone would tackle that problem, the benefit would be much greater than only to apt-file. Maybe this would be a nice GSOC project? Don't know if it is too late for this year's deadline, though. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
