#4448 dselect: Performance gripe with disk method doing dpkg -iGROEB

Package:
dselect
Source:
dpkg
Description:
Debian package management front-end
Submitter:
Date:
2025-07-07 10:53:02 UTC
Severity:
wishlist
#4448#5
Date:
1996-09-09 03:09:36 UTC
From:
To:
When one fires up dselect, puts all packages on hold, chooses one tiny
little package to install --- say, jgraph --- then hits the big
install button ... it takes FOREVER as a long long list of "skipping
deselected package mumble ..."'s scrolls by at an agonizingly slow
pace.  This should not take so long.  And also (unless some internal
dselect extra verbosity switch is enabled) it's pretty useless
verbiage.

It seems to me that installing one package using dselect should be
about as pleasant and fast as installing it directly using dpkg (which
I am making a point of not learning, to preserve my purity as naive
debian critic).
#4448#10
Date:
1996-11-18 18:13:07 UTC
From:
To:
This mail is a bit old, but still on list of outstanding bugs.

IMHO, the problem is the script /usr/lib/dpkg/methods/disk/install.
It does a "dpkg -iGROEB" on the whole selected binary directory.
This can take _very_ long, especially with slow file systems like
nfs over SLIP oder ISDN, or a single speed CD ROM drive.

The ftp/install script is much more intelligent. It fetches only
the necessary packages to a local directory and does a "dpkg -iGROEB"
on the fetched files.

This leads to the conclusion that it is possible to determine
which packages are needed without having a look at all of them.
However, copying the files to a local directory is waste of disk
space when the files are accessible in the filesystem. So, my
proposition is to fix the disk/install script to calculate a
list of packages to process, and then do a "dpkg -iGOEB" on each
package (without the -R option) instead of scanning the whole
directory tree.
#4448#15
Date:
1996-11-18 21:54:00 UTC
From:
To:
weidner@ifi.unizh.ch (Harald Weidner)  wrote on 18.11.96 in <"josef.ifi..423:18.10.96.18.13.18"@ifi.unizh.ch>:

Not only that, it does it separate for each of the binary directories. It
can be fun finally understanding why some of your package selections have
been ignored all the time ... NOT.

However, while this may well qualify as a bug, I do believe it's not the
most important thing on earth.

Either (if it's possible, I'm not certain off my head) give all the
packages as arguments to one call to dpkg, or (probably better) symlink
them all into a working directory and dpkg -iGROEB that directory.


MfG Kai
#4448#22
Date:
1998-02-01 11:22:52 UTC
From:
To:
This is an automated message sent to all bugs older than one year.

This bug is very old. Please take a look at it and see if you can fix it.
If it has already been fixed, please close it.

If you have problems fixing it or if you don't have the time to fix it,
please ask the people on debian-devel@lists.debian.org for help, so that
at least the oldest bugs can be solved before Debian 2.0 is released.

Remco Blaakmeer
#4448#37
Date:
2025-07-07 10:52:00 UTC
From:
To:
For people looking at this after 2023, the code is now in
/usr/lib/dpkg/methods/file/install

Chris