Pacman

Historical bug tracker for the Pacman package manager.

The pacman bug tracker has moved to gitlab:
https://gitlab.archlinux.org/pacman/pacman/-/issues

This tracker remains open for interaction with historical bugs during the transition period. Any new bugs reports will be closed without further action.
Tasklist

FS#57014 - Package retrieval in non-sorted order gives hard-to-read list

Attached to Project: Pacman
Opened by Ralph Corderoy (RalphCorderoy) - Monday, 08 January 2018, 18:30 GMT
Last edited by Allan McRae (Allan) - Sunday, 02 January 2022, 15:26 GMT
Task Type Feature Request
Category Output
Status Closed
Assigned To No-one
Architecture All
Severity Low
Priority Normal
Reported Version 5.0.1
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 1
Private No

Details

pacman 5.0.2-2. (Not an option in `Reported Version'.)

A `pacman -Syu' outputs

Packages (26) aspell-en-2017.08.24-1 binutils-2.29.1-2...

with them in sorted order, but all on one logical line. Often many
physical lines. I think this is display_targets() in src/pacman/util.c
calling alpm_list_msort() on a temporary copy that's then discarded.

Output then proceeds with

:: Retrieving packages...
downloading linux-api-headers-4.14.8-1-any.pkg.tar.xz...
downloading glibc-2.26-10-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz...
...

The first list is in a good order, but hard to read.
The second is in a poor order, but easy to read in a vertical column.
It's poor because the `topic' one's parsing jumps all over
the place, with repeats, e.g. the kernel, whereas sorted would
tend to group related packages together.

Please consider enhancing the retrieval of packages to be in the
same sorted order as the initial list of packages. Thanks.
This task depends upon

Closed by  Allan McRae (Allan)
Sunday, 02 January 2022, 15:26 GMT
Reason for closing:  Won't implement
Additional comments about closing:  Downloads are now done in size order to maximise benefit of parallel downloads.
Comment by Dave Reisner (falconindy) - Monday, 08 January 2018, 18:40 GMT
You want the "VerbosePkgLists" option in /etc/pacman.conf.
Comment by Ralph Corderoy (RalphCorderoy) - Saturday, 20 January 2018, 07:09 GMT
Thanks for the prompt tip about `VerbosePkgLists'.
Its output is useful, but sometimes omitted if the TTY is too narrow,
and although the list of packages is sorted by package name,
it's displayed with a prefix of `{core,extra,...}/'
so the names aren't in a vertical column for easy skimming
like the unsorted `downloading ...' list that follows.

Loading...