Bug#944968: popularity-contest: Program accesses internal dpkg database

[Niels Thykier <niels@thykier.net>]

On Sun, 17 Nov 2019 22:59:58 +0100 Bill Allombert <ballombe@debian.org>
wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 17, 2019 at 10:44:02PM +0100, Guillem Jover wrote:
> > Source: popularity-contest
> > Source-Version: 1.69
> > Severity: important
> > User: debian-dpkg@lists.debian.org
> > Usertags: dpkg-db-access-blocker
> > 
> > Hi!
> > 
> > This package contains the «popularity-contest» program, which directly
> > accesses the dpkg internal database, instead of using one of the public
> > interfaces provided by dpkg.
> > 
> > The program should stop reading the files list files, and switched to
> > use something like:
> > 
> >   «dpkg-query \
> >     --showformat 'Package: ${Package}\nFiles:\n${db-fsys:Files}\n' \
> >     --show»
> > 
> > to get them.
> 
> Hello Guillem,
> 
> the last time this comes up the performance of using dpkg-query was poor. 
> Was it improved ? What is the first release to support this syntax ?
> 
> Cheers,
> -- 
> Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>
> 
> Imagine a large red swirl here. 
> 
> 

Hi,

I tested Guillem's command on my own system and got:

 ~11.5s (cold cache/first time)
 ~0.3 (warm cache/2nd+3rd time)

For reference, "dpkg -l | wc -l" says I have roughly 1500 packages
installed.

I do not know what the original numbers were, so I cannot put the
following numbers into that context.

Thanks,
~Niels