Re: [gentoo-dev] maybe it is time to put portage queries into a database.

[Marius Mauch]

On Wed, 25 Jun 2003 00:00:00 +0200 Tony Clark wrote:

> 12 months ago I thought the search times where acceptable, nowdays
> they are pushing it and with the number of packages going into portage
> sooner rather than later it is going to be unacceptal.  I would also
> suggest a centralised server approach using something like mysql as
> apposed to localised databases based on berekley or something else.
> reason being that a number a ppl are running home lans and they are
> increasing in popularity and there is no need to store N machines
> worth of data. mysql comes to mind as it is a popular database as
> there is a good chance that for some other application it is already
> running on the network.  I know in my case thats so.
>
> I know this has been discussed in the past but always put down for
> reasons I largely agreed with, but the number of packages and times
> have changed.  I don't mind helping out with this with some perl etc.
> What I was thinking on for the initial implementation would be just to
> store the information required for searching.  I don't see a need to
> store all dependcies etc so the installation process actually becomes
> database driven.  In this case the queriey times are so short to the
> actually installation time, no noticable speed up will take place.

I'd suggest a modular approach, so that portage can support different
backends (and frontends) easier. Those who want a minimal systen can
continue to use the filesystem while people who look for more
performance can use a database server. That would require a lot of work
on portage though, probably more than carpaski alone can handle. If
there is interest on the dev side I'd be more than willing to help with
this (although my python skills are lacking, I'm more a Java and C
programmer, but I'm learning fast ;-).

BTW, I also noted the slowness of the search function, especially when
searching in descriptions, my worst measured result was 25 minutes! Most
likely caused by a serious lack of ram, but half an hour just to find a
package is really annoying.

Marius

--
gentoo-dev@g.o mailing list