[Aptitude-devel] Concurrent package downloading (like apt-fast)

[Axel Beckert]

Hi Cal,

Cal Leeming wrote:
> For several months now I have been using apt-fast

It would have been nice to add a reference to that program name as
that program is not part of Debian (and not of Ubuntu either). I
assume you are talking about this apt-fast:

https://github.com/ilikenwf/apt-fast
http://www.mattparnell.com/projects/apt-fast-and-axel-roughly-26x-faster-apt-get-installations-and-upgrades.html

> as a wrapper for apt-get.

apt-get != aptitude

> In short, it concurrently downloads all packages to cache, before
> handing back over to apt-get for running the installation. In every
> situation I have used this, it has resulted in faster download
> speeds.

... AFAIK using axel or aria2 as backends which AFAIK are basically
opening multiple TCP connections downloading the file in parallel in
parts.

> Could a core dev please speculate on why similar functionality has not
> yet been implemented by default? Is this on the roadmap? If not, would
> such a feature ever be considered?

aptitude-devel is the wrong list to ask this. Aptitude offloads
downloading to libapt-* which is built by the apt source package.

Cc'ing the and setting the Reply-To header to the APT developer
mailing list, deity at lists.debian.org.

		Regards, Axel
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