[pacman-dev] [PATCH] Order downloads by descending max_size

[Gavin Troy]

Using the same methodology (although with parallel=7):

16	17	1.06
8	8	1.00
78	78	1.00
6	5	0.83
23	23	1.00
4	4	1.00
17	16	0.94
30	30	1.00
8	8	1.00
8	8	1.00
		1.00 avg

So with my connection there's no significant gain or loss. Since this data was uninteresting I tried again with a large packet delay.
# tc qdisc add dev wlan0 root netem delay 500ms

32	27	0.84
194	184	0.95
37	39	1.05
184	178	0.97
42	37	0.88
257	220	0.86
92	62	0.67
65	44	0.68
77	60	0.78
54	51	0.94
		0.87 avg

On Thu, Aug 12, 2021, at 06:38, Morgan Adamiec wrote:
>
> In my totally untested theory this would slow things down. The ideal
> situation is to have 1 large download running to soak up bandwidth and
> then many small downloads running so they can all be set up and handshake.

I expected the same, but when selecting packages randomly this way I see that there are typically a few very large packages that are both first to start and last to finish. Presumably it does a better job of soaking up bandwidth from the very beginning. If the upgrade list is only small and very-small packages then this might be more likely to run dry towards the end, but I wouldn't be too concerned over finding the perfect sort.