On Sun, Jun 03, 2007 at 11:31:18AM +0100, Neil Williams wrote: > On Sun, 03 Jun 2007 10:55:01 +0100 > Justin Emmanuel <justinemmanuel@gmail.com> wrote: > > I am brand new to this mailing list, I joined it because I had an idea > > that I would like to have considered. Moving apt to a relational > > database, for several reasons. > > What about embedded systems that can barely run sqlite? Is sqlite really *that* heavyweight? Storing information about tens of thousands of packages in plain text files is surely not the best idea. Historically grown. Okay. But still worth to think about. > apt needs to be part of the debian-installer, why lumber the installer > with postgres or mysql or whatever? Nobody wants to use pgsql or mysql as a prerequisite to a base installation. Not the right tool for the job. Perhaps there is other software that is even more basic than sqlite but more basic. > That doesn't justify adding 10-20Mb of extra code to a rootfs - > especially when an Emdebian rootfs may need to be <5Mb in total. The current sqlite package is ~80 KB uncompressed. It I can imagine that the database might even be smaller and waste less inodes than what apt currently does. > > So what do you think? Is this the correct mailing list to send this idea > > to? > > Right mailing list but, IMHO, not a particularly good idea. Sorry. Right mailing list. Very good idea IMHO and right to the point. We just need a volunteer who knows enough about apt to make it use sqlite without breaking everything. Or do we have to wait until Ubuntu sends us a patch? ;) When I complained about the slow package database (it turned out to be that that many files on ext3 make reading the package cache take longer than formatting a floppy disc on a 1541) someone pointed to: http://people.debian.org/~seanius/dpkg-sqlite/ Christoph -- Peer review means that you can feel better because someone else missed the problem, too.
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