On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 10:12 PM, Brock Pytlik<[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Again, maybe I'm being dense, but that's a common usage for an end user who
> (probably) isn't packaging their own software? I'm not saying we should blow
> up local search, just trying to justify my claim that it's rarely used
> outside of packagers of software.
"Search" is perhaps the wrong term. Some use cases:
Given a file, what package is it in? I then know what package to remove to get
the file off my system; what package to add to another system where
it's missing;
and what package to check for patches/updates if there's a problem.
Given a file, where on earth is it? I suspect it's installed, but it's
not where my
path/a script/the compiler is looking for it.
A very common operation: is package foo installed? And in which version
on 2000 boxes?
Searching for pathnames and packages is largely local. As a user or
administrator, remote search isn't that useful - normally I would be
browsing with the graphical package manager, or doing a capability search
("what do I need to play mp3s?", or "I want a python-based CMS that uses
a postgresql back-end"). (As a developer, remote search is more useful:
when configure or the compiler says "libfoo is missing" or "unable to find
include file <bar.h>" then I have filenames to work with, but that is really
a symptom of a deeper underlying problem with building software.)
--
-Peter Tribble
http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/
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