Re: "dselect" replacement team
On Fri, 11 Apr 1997, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> On Fri, 11 Apr 1997, Martin Schulze wrote:
>
> > On Apr 11, Jason Gunthorpe wrote
> >
> > > > Much has to be done... I'm in the process of creating a list of them...
> > > I'd be interested in this list when you get done..
> > If no one stops me it'll be placed in the doc directory on our ftp
> > server.
> Great!
Please announce this when you do it (exact file location, etc.). Or, see
the separate post about a "debian-answers" list I'm making.
> > Sure, a binary format would be faster. But I don't think that it would
> > be that fast that we should lose our ascii files. Just believe the only
> > file for debian which is not plain ascii is .deb.
>
> That was why I was doing those timings, reading a text file ins't exactly
> deadly slow.
But searching a binary-sorted tree is always guarunteed to be faster. And
considering how fast the number of packages has been growing, it may well
become a problem in the not-too-distant future.
> > All other files like debian/rules, debian/control, configuration files
> > etc. etc. are plain ascii files. I have a very strong feeling for
> > keeping them.
>
> Of course, there are too many reasons to stick with simple parsed ascii.
Most of which are probably "tradition", or "compatibility", which we
should eventually be able to eliminate.
> > > Libdb might be a good idea to implement in a cache mode, ie have status.db
> > > which is a mirror of status in libdb format, then if status is changed the
> > > db is rebuilt.
> > Hmm, I have a very simple idea.
> >
> > libdpkg looks for status and status.db. If the latter exist and has the
> > same date or newer it is taken, otherwise the plain ascii file is used
> > and a new .db is generated. What about this?
>
> Exactly! Thats what I call a cache file.
OTOH, it may be better to eventually aim to support the text-file through
a separate utilty, which can extract and re-build the database. dpkg-ftp,
and others would have to be updated to use the database first though.
But agreed, a cache-file is a good idea, since many more programs want
read-access to the database than write. (Only dpkg and dselect want to
write, as far as I am aware).
Hmmm, I just had a thought. We _NEED_ some kind of perl interface to the
libdpkg, for dpkg-ftp, etc. Arggh.
> I will take a look at libdb's docs right now I guess..
>From the docs I read earlier today (dbopen.3, hash.3, btree.3), it seems
the most appropriate method is BTREE.
Will it be write-cached as well? :)
--
Tom Lees <tom@lpsg.demon.co.uk> http://www.lpsg.demon.co.uk/
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