From: "Ludovic Courtès" <ludo@gnu.org>
To: Bruno Haible <bruno@clisp.org>
Cc: 35551-done@debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#35551: guix search
Date: Fri, 10 May 2019 12:17:30 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87sgtm1umd.fsf@gnu.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <3642152.sbCaK8LMaK@omega> (Bruno Haible's message of "Fri, 10 May 2019 11:38:31 +0200")
Hi Bruno,
Bruno Haible <bruno@clisp.org> skribis:
>> I would hope that ‘guix search’ and ‘guix package --list-available’ are
>> easier than anything else, and that people value the idea of doing
>> things locally. Also, a local search gives the right result while a
>> remote service might give results for a different Guix revision.
>>
>> Is there any specific reason why you were uncomfortable with these
>> commands? I’m curious how we could improve the user experience here.
>
> Yes. I was looking for a package that contains the 'ssh' command.
> $ guix search ssh | less
> returns libssh, libssh2, guile2.0-ssh, guile-ssh, sshpass, ...,
> emacs-counsel-tramp.
> The answer I was looking for was 'openssh', but it was hidden
> among 66 packages.
I see.
> A search is good if the relevant results for the user occur
> among the first screen.
>
> Possible improvements include:
>
> 1) If the search term is X and installing the package would cause
> a program named X to appear in $PATH, then list this package first.
>
> This rule would have listed 'openssh' first. Also, for 'guix search gcc',
> it would now make 'gcc-toolchain' appear first (right?).
I agree that this would be great, but we don’t know beforehand what
commands a package provides. For that we’d need to resort to an
external service providing this info.
> 2) Another heuristic for presenting the "best" hits first:
> Sort the graph of the packages (using dependencies as graph edges).
> Then present the "base" packages (the packages which don't depend on
> other packages) first.
>
> This will likely make packages that are bindings (guile-ssh, ruby-net-ssh,
> etc.) appear after openssh.
This sounds like an interesting option, at least when one is searching
for an application and not for a library.
> 3) If the resulting list is longer than one screenful, present only the
> names, not names + details. Like
> $ guix search ssh | grep '^name:'
> would do.
> Even without the improvements 1) and 2), the command
> $ guix search ssh | grep '^name:' | grep ssh | sort
> produces a one-screenful result that I could have evaluated in 10 seconds.
OK, though you would have been unable to see the descriptions.
Another option I thought of would be to display only the 10 results with
the highest relevance by default, when stdout is a terminal.
Thoughts?
Thanks,
Ludo’.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2019-05-10 10:18 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 27+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2019-05-03 22:57 bug#35551: package gcc does not depend on binutils and glibc Bruno Haible
2019-05-03 23:27 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2019-05-04 0:20 ` Tobias Geerinckx-Rice
2019-05-04 1:34 ` Bruno Haible
2019-05-07 16:23 ` Tobias Geerinckx-Rice
2019-05-07 17:26 ` Bruno Haible
2019-05-07 16:04 ` Ludovic Courtès
2019-05-09 21:21 ` Ricardo Wurmus
2019-05-09 21:57 ` Bruno Haible
2019-05-10 6:18 ` Ricardo Wurmus
2019-05-10 8:07 ` Ludovic Courtès
2019-05-10 9:38 ` bug#35551: guix search Bruno Haible
2019-05-10 10:17 ` Ludovic Courtès [this message]
2019-05-10 10:22 ` Bruno Haible
2019-05-10 15:17 ` Ludovic Courtès
2019-05-10 14:21 ` Bruno Haible
2019-05-10 21:15 ` Ludovic Courtès
2019-05-10 22:04 ` Mark H Weaver
2019-05-10 22:38 ` Bruno Haible
2019-05-10 23:41 ` Tobias Geerinckx-Rice
2019-05-11 18:38 ` Mark H Weaver
2019-05-11 18:18 ` Mark H Weaver
2019-05-13 7:57 ` Ludovic Courtès
2019-05-13 15:39 ` znavko
2019-05-10 15:43 ` znavko
2019-05-10 21:22 ` Bruno Haible
2019-05-10 10:18 ` Bruno Haible
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