Re: [gentoo-portage-dev] search functionality in emerge

[Douglas Anderson]

Emma,

It would be great it you could speed search up a bit!

As these other guys have pointed out, we do have some indexing tools in
Gentoo already. Most users don't understand why that kind of functionality
isn't built directly into Portage, but IIRC it has something to do with the
fact that these fast search indexes aren't able to be written to by more
than one process at the same time, so for example if you had two emerges
finishing at the same time, Portage's current flat hash file can handle
that, but the faster db-based indexes can't.

Anyways, that's the way I, as a curious user, understood the problem.

You might be interested in reading this, very old forum thread about a
previous attempt:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-261580-postdays-0-postorder-asc-start-0.html

On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 11:33 PM, Pacho Ramos <
pacho@××××××××××××××××××××××××.es> wrote:

> El dom, 23-11-2008 a las 16:01 +0200, tvali escribió:
> > Try esearch.
> >
> > emerge esearch
> > esearch ...
> >
> > 2008/11/23 Emma Strubell <emma.strubell@×××××.com>
> >         Hi everyone. My name is Emma, and I am completely new to this
> >         list. I've been using Gentoo since 2004, including Portage of
> >         course, and before I say anything else I'd like to say thanks
> >         to everyone for such a kickass package management system!!
> >
> >         Anyway, for my final project in my Data Structures &
> >         Algorithms class this semester, I would like to modify the
> >         search functionality in emerge. Something I've always noticed
> >         about 'emerge -s' or '-S' is that, in general, it takes a very
> >         long time to perform the searches. (Although, lately it does
> >         seem to be running faster, specifically on my laptop as
> >         opposed to my desktop. Strangely, though, it seems that when I
> >         do a simple 'emerge -av whatever' on my laptop it takes a very
> >         long time for emerge to find the package and/or determine the
> >         dependecies -  whatever it's doing behind that spinner. I can
> >         definitely go into more detail about this if anyone's
> >         interested. It's really been puzzling me!) So, as my final
> >         project I've proposed to improve the time it takes to perform
> >         a search using emerge. My professor suggested that I look into
> >         implementing indexing.
> >
> >         However, I've started looking at the code, and I must admit
> >         I'm pretty overwhelmed! I don't know where to start. I was
> >         wondering if anyone on here could give me a quick overview of
> >         how the search function currently works, an idea as to what
> >         could be modified or implemented in order to improve the
> >         running time of this code, or any tip really as to where I
> >         should start or what I should start looking at. I'd really
> >         appreciate any help or advice!!
> >
> >         Thanks a lot, and keep on making my Debian-using professor
> >         jealous :]
> >         Emma
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > tvali
> >
> > Kuskilt foorumist: http://www.cooltests.com - kui inglise keelt oskad.
> > Muide, üle 120 oled väga tark, üle 140 oled geenius, mingi 170 oled ju
> > mingi täica pea nagu prügikast...
>
> I use eix:
> emerge eix
>
> ;-)
>
>
>