Nicolás Lichtmaier wrote: > > What would be it use? Well... for installed packages you may just perform a > 'du -c $(/var/lib/dpkg/info/package.list)'. > When faced with this argument people said: "ok.. but wht about uninstalled > poackages? Deity (when it finally descends to the earth) would be able to > scan the tar file to extract this "du" control file!" If this program has to > scan the tar to see if the program fits in the HD... why can't it do a "dpkg > -c package.deb"?.
Because that requires parsing the entire tar file, which requires gunzipping it all, an operation which can take minutes for large packages (on my p-166): [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/var/mirror/debian/main/binary-i386/x11>time dpkg -c xbooks_3.3.1-2.deb >/dev/null 21.40user 2.35system 0:25.32elapsed 93%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k 0inputs+0outputs (4573major+96minor)pagefaults 0swaps -- see shy jo
