Bug#428897: New apt version?

[Daniel Burrows]

On Sat, Jun 16, 2007 at 08:42:43AM -0700, Matt Kraai <kraai at ftbfs.org> was heard to say:
> This problem sounds similar to that described in the second email in
> 428616.  Unfortunately, there's not enough information there to know
> how to fix the problem.
>
> Daniel, could the problem that slows down aptitude also slow down
> update-manager?  Could you outline what needs to be done to fix it?

  In theory, it could slow any program using apt down.  The basic
problem is that now, when you do Mark*(), apt runs an algorithm over
the whole cache to find unused packages.  This isn't too slow if it's
done once, but if you modify more than one package in a row it starts
to add up.

  The solution is to tell apt that you're going to perform a group of
actions.  You do this by creating a pkgDepCache::ActionGroup that wraps
your actions; as long as it exists, apt will not update the unused
states of packages.

  Daniel