Description of problem: Anaconda does not provide any indication about how big a software package is and the grand total of what it will install Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Just install 2. 3. Actual results: Fly by night installation Expected results: I think it is obvious Additional info: I find very disturbing to install without knowing how much space things will take. I am not asking for an installer who tells me the moment I click: "you will lack space on such parttition" that would be a very difficult problem to solve with decent speed. I am just asking one who tells me: this takes 50 Megs and the grand total of what you have required is 4568 Megs. I also know that dependencies (BTW Mandrake calculates them on real time so there are no reason you can't) and files generated at install time will offset the calculations but at the very least the user should know about the ballpark so he knows if he is in danger of installation not being able to proceed once everything is accounted for (dependencies, the RPM database, generated files, the installer). Providing that minimum of info is not feature, it is a _requirement_.
If there's enough space, that will get reported when the install begins. We can't provide anything which is even close to accurate without doing dep resolution which is fairly memory intensive and which therefore requires that swap be started first to support installation on older hardware
I only ask for the ballpark (ie what you get when you add the volume of everything the user has selected plus the "hidden packages" without hunting for dependencies). While it is true that when you install one package it could bring dependencies who far exceed the volume of the package itself, when you install a whole distribution the volume of main packages tends to far exceed the volume of dependencies between other things because the same library is required by possibly dozens of packages. Anyhthing would be better that present situation where user doesn't see neither the volume of the thing he is selecting nor the total of what he has selected. Also, for future versions you could consider to precalculate dependencies: ie instead of having a file telling that package foobar requires libnss.so.6 and /usr/bin/perl and solving dependencies at install time have a file telling that package foobar requires glibc-2.481 and perl-5.31. It would be muuuuch less resource intensive. I suspect this is what Mandrake does and what allows them to tell the user in real time that installing foobar will require to also install barfoo and raboof.