apt-get

[Colin Watson]

On Wed, Mar 08, 2006 at 09:44:19AM -0000, martin hooper wrote:
> I notice that when I use apt-get to install software on Ubuntu it takes 
> two passes to actually install.
> 
> ie Unpacking all the debs first then the setting up phase.
> 
> I was wondering if apt-get cannot be re-written to do both phases after 
> each other for each package??  It would be much quicker I guess to do it 
> that way rather than the way it is now.

It wouldn't be any quicker, because it still has to do all the same
work. In fact, it would be slower, because it would have to invoke dpkg
once or twice for each package rather than doing 'dpkg --unpack <big
list of packages>' followed by 'dpkg --configure <big list of
packages>'.

Generally speaking, the current behaviour also makes satisfying
dependencies during package installation much, much simpler.

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]