Unidentified subject!
Preston wrote:
"I wrote a little Python script to help you out with apt that I'm
calling aptsearch."
"Basically you can search the availible package list in
/var/state/apt/lists for a regular expression."
"Naturally, it's not perfect. The main drawback is that it takes about
10-12 seconds to do most searches on my Pentium-233. This is
considerably longer than apt-cache takes. I'd like to optimize it
more, maybe that's where I need help. Part of the overhead is Python
I suppose, but there might be a more efficient way to code it in Python."
The SWIM coach writes:
You should take a serious look at the databases produced by SWIM for the
Packages lists found /var/state/apt/lists. You will get some nice speed
improvements using these databases. In the near future there are plans to
include a variety of searches besides the existing --search and
--powersearch options. These will include a package relationship search,
and a menu system search.
You can find the lastest source code at
http://the.netpedia.net/project/experimental. I update the source code
practically every day, so just check the date on the file because I am not
giving the source code a new version for every change I make.
SWIM uses DB_File. DB_File comes standard with perl, but perl 5.004/libc
2.0.7 is compiled for the 1.85 Berkeley database. SWIM works o.k. with
this set-up, but --rebuildflatdb and --rebuildflatndb will be buggy, so
grab the newest version of DB_File from CPAN (www.perl.com) and compile it
either for libdb2 or the newer libc6 2.1 (with db2 support). This problem
should eventually be resolved in unstable when the new perl becomes
available - we hope.
Preson wrote:
"Well, anyway, I'm not sure where to go with this from here. I know I
will be using it myself but it would be great if it helped others. Maybe
someone on this list can give me an idea. Perhaps I should just make
a debian package of it and post it on my tripod page or something, I
don't know. If anyone would like to try out the script, just email
me. I'd love to have some feedback on it."
The SWIM coach writes:
Go ahead and send me a copy. And I'd love to see someone take advantage
of SWIM's powerful databases capabilities. Please join the SWIM team!
Jonathan Rosenbaum
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