Joao Estevao wrote:
is there any reason why the download code is in pacman and not in the library? yes, i know, this way the frontends are not forced to use libftp, for example they can use curl, if you want. but i think this is not the same situation as the list handling functions / GList (ie. at a gtk frontend)
imho placing the old download code in pacman, and not in the library is a disadvantage, and not an advantage
The way I see it it is always an advantage, it's simpler this way. It's entirely up to the frontends to download the packages and the db's. One can implement a more exotic method of download, for instance, the frontend could retrieve the packages with the help of a bittorrent library. That would alleviate the burden on the main or the mirror's server. Or one could check the packages for viruses, but I'm really just dreaming here...
I second Joao's opinion: I can hardly think of a good reason to put the download code on the library side. The idea so far is to keep the library preporagatives to a simple set of opeartions relating to packages installation/removal. The file download is a high-level feature, let's say provided by the frontend for more conveniency. What's the idea behind this proposal? -- Aurelien