From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic =?utf-8?Q?Court=C3=A8s?=) Subject: Re: Adding tags to packages Date: Sun, 03 Jan 2016 15:33:22 +0100 Message-ID: <877fjqu40d.fsf@gnu.org> References: <568828EF.7050406@gnu.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:38542) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1aFjiq-0001Zp-9p for guix-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 03 Jan 2016 09:33:29 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1aFjin-0007EG-4j for guix-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 03 Jan 2016 09:33:28 -0500 Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::e]:41593) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1aFjin-0007EC-1W for guix-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 03 Jan 2016 09:33:25 -0500 In-Reply-To: <568828EF.7050406@gnu.org> (Fabio Pesari's message of "Sat, 2 Jan 2016 20:45:51 +0100") List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: Fabio Pesari Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org Fabio Pesari skribis: > In short, I think tags are a simple solution to a problem that's been > around for many years, and the fact that it wasn't done properly in the > past is purely anecdotal and doesn't mean it can't be done properly now. As discussed before=C2=B9, even though I=E2=80=99m sympathetic to the appro= ach, I believe experience suggests that tags are not a success. The main reason is probably that it provides a UI that=E2=80=99s more =E2= =80=9Ccomplex=E2=80=9D than plain-text/regexp search, and that plain-text search works =E2=80=9Cwe= ll enough=E2=80=9D most of the time. As Alex writes, one can always choose not to use tags; this would be an argument for implementing them. However, it seems to me that the cost of implementing and maintaining them would be high enough (the implementation itself may not be that trivial if we want a query language, i18n, RDF(?), and whatnot.) What about exploring ways to improve --search? I can think of a very simple improvement to make: make it so that guix package -s '\' -s game returns packages that match *both* regexps instead of one or the other as is currently the case? We could make a similar change in guix.el. A second idea would be to rank search matches based on the number of occurrences of the regexps and their location (package name vs. description.) Thoughts? Thanks, Ludo=E2=80=99. =C2=B9 https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2015-07/msg00198.html