bug#42291: data service: Show list of files and allow qeuerying

bug#42291: data service: Show list of files and allow qeuerying

[Hartmut Goebel]

Serverity: wishlist
I often find myself checking the content of a package. For this I would like to be able to inspect the list of files in a package, or even query for a specific file.

This is much like Debian does in "list of files" for each package (e.g. <https://packages.debian.org/en/buster/amd64/ejabberd-mod-cron/filelist>) and with "Search the contents of packages" <https://www.debian.org/distrib/packages#search_contents>

Many thanks :-)

-- 
Regards
Hartmut Goebel

| Hartmut Goebel          | h.goebel@crazy-compilers.com               |
| www.crazy-compilers.com | compilers which you thought are impossible |

bug#42291: data service: Show list of files and allow qeuerying

[zimoun]

Dear,

+Pierre because I am not sure he reads carefully debuugs. ;-)

On Thu, 09 Jul 2020 at 10:13, Hartmut Goebel <h.goebel@crazy-compilers.com> wrote:
> Serverity: wishlist
> I often find myself checking the content of a package. For this I
> would like to be able to inspect the list of files in a package, or
> even query for a specific file.

Pierre proposed "guix filesearch" some time ago.

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2019-03/msg00236.html


> This is much like Debian does in "list of files" for each package (e.g. <https://packages.debian.org/en/buster/amd64/ejabberd-mod-cron/filelist>) and with "Search the contents of packages" <https://www.debian.org/distrib/packages#search_contents>

Yes, it could be nice to have that in the Data Service.


All the best,
simon

bug#42291: data service: Show list of files and allow qeuerying

[Pierre Neidhardt]

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The good news is that I'm going to work on this... Soon© ;)

-- 
Pierre Neidhardt
https://ambrevar.xyz/

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bug#42291: data service: Show list of files and allow qeuerying

[Bengt Richter]

Hi

On +2020-07-09 11:25:05 +0200, zimoun wrote:
> Dear,
> 
> +Pierre because I am not sure he reads carefully debuugs. ;-)
> 
> On Thu, 09 Jul 2020 at 10:13, Hartmut Goebel <h.goebel@crazy-compilers.com> wrote:
> > Serverity: wishlist
> > I often find myself checking the content of a package. For this I
> > would like to be able to inspect the list of files in a package, or
> > even query for a specific file.
> 
> Pierre proposed "guix filesearch" some time ago.
> 
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2019-03/msg00236.html
> 
> 
> > This is much like Debian does in "list of files" for each package (e.g. <https://packages.debian.org/en/buster/amd64/ejabberd-mod-cron/filelist>) and with "Search the contents of packages" <https://www.debian.org/distrib/packages#search_contents>
> 
> Yes, it could be nice to have that in the Data Service.
>

Since this is about listing files, seems like it wouldn't be that hard to provide
a file globbing selection option like find dir -iname globexpr (pass through to find itself?)
(hm, also -newerct timespec can be a handy find opt)
and/or output control like "stat -c 'formatstring'" (likewise pass through to stat) ?
Also, ls-borrowed options like -B -1 -d -A might be nice.

If you want to consider the general problem of inspecting arbitrary object component details,
lsblk -o,selected,fields,listed,here  might be a good model (including -n option).

I think it would be nice if all object detail listing functions would converge in design
to a few consistent ways of specifying source and output options, so we wouldn't have
to re-invent "$(foo -dumpalot|sed -E ad_hoc_hack)" so much.

Are there any system design guidelines for converging?

BTW, please preserve cli and info retrieval independence from GUI systems,
(except when GUI preferences and parameters are the objects being inspected,
of course, but even then, minimize entanglements :)
    
> 
> All the best,
> simon
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Regards,
Bengt Richter

bug#42291: data service: Show list of files and allow qeuerying

[Christopher Baines]

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Hartmut Goebel <h.goebel@crazy-compilers.com> writes:

> Serverity: wishlist
> I often find myself checking the content of a package. For this I
> would like to be able to inspect the list of files in a package, or
> even query for a specific file.
>
> This is much like Debian does in "list of files" for each package
> (e.g. <https://packages.debian.org/en/buster/amd64/ejabberd-mod-cron/filelist>)
> and with "Search the contents of packages"
> <https://www.debian.org/distrib/packages#search_contents>
>
> Many thanks :-)

Hi Hartmut,

So, I'm in total agreement that this data would be great to have, but so
far I've not been imagining meeting the need to search the files or
contents of store items through the Guix Data Service.

The contents of a package can also be viewed as the contents of a
directory in the store. The Guix Data Service does know about nars, but
just the information in the narinfo file.

What I've had in mind for a while is a service that listens to the Guix
Data Service for new nars, downloads them, indexes them (either just the
files, or file contents too), and then provides a search interface over
this data. It's a little tricky, as you have to decide what to do about
the build reproducibility problem, if a package doesn't build
reproducibly, it's possible to get multiple different lists of files for
the same package.

At the moment, I'm looking at the "building things" area, but I'm still
interested in this.

Thanks,

Chris

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