[axel-devel] [axel-Bugs][313443] Request: single-line output mode

Wed Nov 9 13:55:23 UTC 2011

Bugs item #313443, was opened at 2011-11-09 13:55
You can respond by visiting: 
https://alioth.debian.org/tracker/?func=detail&atid=413085&aid=313443&group_id=100070

Status: Open
Priority: 3
Submitted By: Nobody (None)
Assigned to: Nobody (None)
Summary: Request: single-line output mode 

Initial Comment:
Anonymous message posted by i3367890 at gmail.com

Axel has either a many-line output-mode which is obviously designed for grepping and/or sedding, and an "alternate" output mode, not compatible with a non-terminal output device, which is the only way to get an ETA. I can't say I like this.

I've had a look around the source code to try and modify it to work the way I want but I can't say I really understand what's going on, so rather than try and tie my brain into knots, I think it more resource- and time-efficient to ask you guys, the developers, for what I'd want, since you know where everything is and will probably be able to do it in 5 minutes. Or maybe 15. :P

What I would like is a new "single-line" output mode for axel, both so I can use it as a replacement downloader for my package manager, pacman (I use Arch Linux), and so if I want to download multiple files I don't end up with a messy terminal - as far as I know, there is *no program* with this feature!

In this mode, axel would print out an appropriate selection of initialization messages (you might decide: say, just the filename), then, roughly similar to the pacman visual format (correctly spaced)...

 package-name...             2.9M  798.6K/s 00:00:03 [#####################] 100%

...axel would print the filename, download status, speed, ETA and percentage. It currently prints all of these but in a slightly different way. I thought it wouldn't be hard to modify but I just can't figure out how to modify all of the little details to make it consistent :)

I think that if this mode were implemented axel would probably be adopted by a lot of Arch Linux users; currently no accelerated download functionality is available as a part of the package manager, and while an alternate download program is supported, the supplied usage example invokes aria2c, which is an awesome program, but prints out 3 lines per download, and those 3 lines don't even include the package name!

Finally, while I'm here, if you do ever decide to implement this idea, I would request you take a look at http://www.archlinux.org/mirrorlist/all/ - this is the file used to implement Pacman's mirror selection functionality. It would be very VERY cool - you'd have EVERYONE using axel if you did this :D - if you could possibly figure out a nice elegant way to parse this file with a shell script that interacts with axel such that axel downloads multiple files from different servers, at once. Pacman has a way to spit out all the package files it needs to download to update the system; the script component of this modification could parse pacman's output then somehow invoke axel to manage the entire list of downloads, multiplexed with the entire list of mirrors. THAT would be cool. :D

-i336

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You can respond by visiting: 
https://alioth.debian.org/tracker/?func=detail&atid=413085&aid=313443&group_id=100070