This blog post is about the recent work done in aptdaemon - the backend used by Ubuntu’s software-center to install/remove packages.
In the last week I finally managed to address one of the most awaited features in aptdaemon: dependency handling. It doesn’t sound very exciting at first, but listen: It is now possible to get the dependencies of a transaction (e.g. installing packages) from aptdaemon (and also some more information). Previously the client (e.g. software-center) had to calculate those.
But there is also another aspect which makes this non-trvial: aptdaemon uses transactions to allow users to queue several package management tasks in a row: at first install xterm, then install this codec, then upgrade the system, and so on … Aptdaemon will now take the queued transactions into account when it presents you the dependencies! So if a previous transaction already installs a package it won’t ask you again if you want to install it.
But a screencast says more than a thousand words!
The work is currently part of the future-status branch and will be merged soon.