I noticed that the software center lets you line up packages to install in real time. I was wondering if a program similar to apt-get could make a download que and install packages as soon as the download was finished, packages could be downloading while another installed.
cheesehead(Brainstorm admin)
wrote on the 7 Sep 10 at 22:39
Seems like the idea is more like:
sudo apt-get install package1 package2 package3
sudo apt-get install package4 #appends to the existing list of packages awaiting action
And there have indeed been lots of ideas for ambitions simultaneous download / install using queues, but this seems much more sensible...and quite useful to us poor humans who do suddenly remember a package at inopportune moments.
@pererik87: just "apt-get install p1 p2 p3" will download all the packages and only after download is complete will begin to install them. And if you "apt-get install p4" in another terminal, it'll only warn you that apt is already in use.
Hsem's idea is making a queue as a new functionality - and seems easy enough and useful enough to implement.
A queuing functionality for apt would be nice, but it should be transparent. An "apt-get install p" concurrently to a running "apt-get install p'" should resolve the dependencys of p with the assumption that p' (with dependencies) is installed, wait for completion of "apt-get install p'" and then install p with dependencys unless the user aborted the install. It should display a message to show why it it waiting with the actual installation.
This idea proposes "downloading WHILE another is installed".
I think solution 2 solves the opposite: first download all and AFTERWARDS install all packages.
Both can be useful: #1 saves time, #2 installs while being offline. But IMHO solution 2 should go into a separate idea.