Re: Package file indexing

[raingloom <raingloom@riseup.net>]

On Thu, 2020-01-02 at 23:50 +0100, zimoun wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Thu, 2 Jan 2020 at 18:12, Pierre Neidhardt <mail@ambrevar.xyz>
> wrote:
> 
> > Last but not least: previously we suggested adding a subcommand
> > like
> > "guix which" or "guix filesearch".  In another thread, Simon
> > suggested
> > that this would be a bad idea and factoring the file search into
> > "guix
> > search" is probably better.
> 
> It appears to me better for 2 reasons:
>  1. because obviously "filesearch" is a kind of "search" ;-) so it
> adds consistency.
>  2. because it allows (in the near future) mixed research: "guix
> search bin/hg python" applying the "python" filter only to the
> packages returned by "bin/hg". And "guix search python bin/hg" search
> the binary file "hg" only to the packages matching "python.
> 

What about files in root (so, ones with no slashes in their path, at
least in your syntax) and files you don't know the full path of, only
their basename?

Do you search for every word as a file path, just in case it might be
one?

To avoid confusion, I think this should be an option/subcommand of
search. Something like -path and -name in find(1).