I would like to be able to setup a list of changes, and then save that list to a file in a way that I can apply them later.
This would be good to choose all the packages you want, and then download and install them later (after closing Smart and re-opening it) when it is more suitable.
This would also be useful to avoid losing "work". I often browse the packages and select a few hundred, and I would like to be able to save before committing so that if Smart crashes I can simply reload the list and re-commit it. Sometimes dpkg or rpm crashes or gets an error part way through and then I must go through the tedious task of selecting all the packages again.
It could save a list like this: (I don't mean the file should look like this, but this is the basic idea)
Install package AAAA1
Upgrade package AAAA2
Remove package AAAA3
If one of those things has changed since before (e.g. the package has been install by another program) then it can just ignore that entry, and warn the user.
I think this would be a great wish list feature.
I'm using Kubuntu 8.04 KDE 3.5.9.
Have you tried using --dump? That's precisely the use case it was supposed to handle
when the option was originally coded. You can dump the packages that would be
installed/removed, and then use the same list later to install/remove them.