Re: `guix search` feature or bug?

[zimoun <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com>]

Hi,

On Wed, 17 Jul 2019 at 23:31, Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> wrote:

> zimoun <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com> skribis:

> > From the function `relevance` in `guix/ui.scm`, if I understand well,
> > it seems expected. Each field deals with the regexp and the terms
> > `software` and `tools` does not appear both in only one field.
> >
> > Is this behaviour expected?
>
> Not really!  It’s the result of commit
> 8874faaaac665100a095ef25e39c9a389f5a397f, but I agree that what you
> expected would be nicer.  We should fix it.

Thank you for pointing the commit. I am always impressed how Guix is
powerful, awesome!
I mean, to try the previous behavior (regexps connected with logical
*OR*), I just need to run:

  guix pull --commit=c25b44d640 -p old-guix
  ./old-guix/bin/guix search crypto library |  recsel -e '! (name ~
"^(ghc|perl|python|ruby)")' -C -R name,relevance

which outputs non cryptographic libraries. Ouch!


From my point of view, there is 2 issues:
 1. the pure search
 2. the scoring (see the other thread [1] ;-))

The easy fix for the pure search is to simply use `recsel` ;-)
The correct command line of the example from the manual is:

guix search " " \
    | recsel -e '! (name ~ "^(ghc|perl|python|ruby)")' \
    | recsel -e \
 '((synopsis ~ "[L|l]ibrary") || (description ~ "[L|l]ibrary")) &&
((synopsis ~ "[C|c]rypto") || (description ~ "[C|c]rypto"))' \
             -C -P name | sort


IMO, a better UI should be to not use `recsel` at all. :-)
Something in this flavour:

guix search library crypto '!(%n ~ "^(ghc|perl|python|ruby)")' --pretty="%S %n"

Well, as previously mentioned [2] ;-)

What do you think?
Do it appear to you a good idea to integrate in `guix search` more
(regexp) filtering and output options?


[1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2019-07/msg00270.html
[2] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2018-12/msg00480.html


> Do you want to give it a try?  :-)

I do not know if I have enough Scheme skills to fix the inter-field
logical *AND*.
Let see, I will give it a try. :-)
Or maybe someone will be faster than me ;-)
(summer holidays soon...)


All the best,
simon