On July 16, 2003 05:47 pm, Christopher Egner wrote:
> I'm not sure how portage stores data. It doesn't seem efficient however
> with the speed of queries. My thought would be to implement a mini-db.
> However, I don't know that this would really solve things (it'd be nice
> and easy to maintain...). I can't say that any database would
> necessarily save much time on searches.
>
> I do like the idea of more descriptive entries, however, I feel that
> this would unnecessarily bog down portage.
>
> We do, btw, have a way to search descriptions. It just so happens that
> its seperate from --search (that way search isn't so slow). I believe
> the option is something like --searchdesc I know for short options its
> -S.
>
> Ultimately, we may need a revamp of the internals for portage, but since
> I haven't had the chance to see what makes it tick, I couldn't tell you.
> I believe the dev guys have their reasons for not making it a db, but I
> can't recall if they said why.


my best guess is that portage will have to go db-based sooner or later.  
there's just too many packages in there, and too much of a need to get info 
on them.  the thinking that gentoo is "only for people who know what they 
want to install" (another section of this thread) is a very narrow one.  i'm 
not exactly new to linux, but i had no idea what "ufed" was, let alone that 
it existed.  some people have posted to this list looking for "something that 
will create a vcd for me".  k3b would be a great option for them, but if you 
look at the description, you get:

*  app-cdr/k3b
      Latest version available: 0.8.1-r1
      Latest version installed: 0.8.1-r1
      Size of downloaded files: 2,774 kB
      Homepage:    http://k3b.sourceforge.net
      Description: K3b, KDE CD Writing Software

handy... but only if you want to burn a cd.  the only way i found out about 
this was was opening up kportage, and scrolling down the list, looking for 
anything that looked promising, and guessing as to its quality based on the 
version number.

there needs to be more detail in portage for each package and a ranking system 
in place for those of us that don't know what's good and don't want to 
download 7 different packages to find out.  xcdroast? cdrx? k3b? gtoaster? 
etc. etc.

my $0.02


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