From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:39797) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jBDBm-00083u-Us for guix-patches@gnu.org; Mon, 09 Mar 2020 03:51:04 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1jBDBl-00085d-Ny for guix-patches@gnu.org; Mon, 09 Mar 2020 03:51:02 -0400 Received: from debbugs.gnu.org ([209.51.188.43]:43711) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_128_CBC_SHA1:16) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1jBDBl-00085Z-LV for guix-patches@gnu.org; Mon, 09 Mar 2020 03:51:01 -0400 Received: from Debian-debbugs by debbugs.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1jBDBl-0003zm-JV for guix-patches@gnu.org; Mon, 09 Mar 2020 03:51:01 -0400 Subject: [bug#39258] [PATCH v2 0/3] Xapian for Guix package search Resent-Message-ID: From: Pierre Neidhardt In-Reply-To: <875zffcc87.fsf@gnu.org> References: <20200307133116.11443-1-arunisaac@systemreboot.net> <87sgijgb1v.fsf@gnu.org> <875zffcc87.fsf@gnu.org> Date: Mon, 09 Mar 2020 08:50:35 +0100 Message-ID: <877dzuvues.fsf@ambrevar.xyz> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; boundary="=-=-="; micalg=pgp-sha256; protocol="application/pgp-signature" List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-patches-bounces+kyle=kyleam.com@gnu.org Sender: "Guix-patches" To: Ludovic =?UTF-8?Q?Court=C3=A8s?= , Arun Isaac Cc: 39258@debbugs.gnu.org, zimon.toutoune@gmail.com --=-=-= Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Ludovic Court=C3=A8s writes: > Yeah. I think we need to take the whole user experience into account, > not just =E2=80=98guix search=E2=80=99. =E2=80=98guix pull=E2=80=99 alre= ady feels very slow, and it=E2=80=99s a > fairly common operation. Conversely, =E2=80=98guix search=E2=80=99 takes= roughly > between 0.5 and 2 seconds and is an uncommon operation on a =E2=80=9Cslow= path=E2=80=9D > (in the sense that when you=E2=80=99re searching for software, you=E2=80= =99ll probably > have to spend more than a couple of seconds to find what you=E2=80=99re l= ooking > for.) I think I disagree with "guix search" being an uncommon operation and a slow path. =2D The slowness of `guix search' (and the awkwardness of recutils) is maybe what makes it uncommon: users refrain from using it because it's too impractical. =2D Searches are typically refined, i.e. you run a search multiple times by precising the terms, so in that sense I believe `guix search` is a very common operation. Or should be. Anyways, one of the key issues here is the inherent limitation of the shell interface that does not allow us to directly and contextually process the output of a command (at least not without rerunning it). This issue can only be tackled with a GUI: there the user would be able to interactively act with the result of the search, without having to re-run the search. Concretely, the GUI search would only return the package name, version and synopses. No need for the Texinfo / recutils juggling. Then the user would select the packages of interest to display more details. This allows us to query the full details just-in-time. Back to the topic: I believe that Xapian is a huge win both for the shell and the future GUI :) =2D-=20 Pierre Neidhardt https://ambrevar.xyz/ --=-=-= Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQEzBAEBCAAdFiEEUPM+LlsMPZAEJKvom9z0l6S7zH8FAl5l9UsACgkQm9z0l6S7 zH8LzQf/W/eTpJMUphwkd4KFmmhNeUQeXk4K07i+1b2zm2BipqYVN2DOGMdFfAzO MiVg/G0fNJQ/AMAr7mSjJnoSP0OPQ3o25/FBu2O5wLcw/8CNRUOL85tfEq/4iBlS vm+J33eiJZBGXDzRTxXV2wY/tE0pL7Jc98vy/2d5yEBP2yc87gr2WgEUO9AwqyV9 xSCmu+/ZNI381zT3hWGfR2FkctLpXHnWt6roHcIiIbuFiVxhLkQ8/VYcxAkB+jNK KJEfohyQoXPuefeWCHQLqTuk5XakAtXpVV7NChq2jf3Yl6676A53VBddGSj7ctoo cyUL78LbDWheHbHvT/8n4aXynYt1bQ== =M5Cf -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --=-=-=--