Re: Improve package search

[Tobias Geerinckx-Rice <me@tobias.gr>]

Pierre!

Pierre Neidhardt wrote:
>> Absolutely.  Adding this to the package record manually is a 
>> maintenance
>> nightmare.  It's data that can be trivially auto-generated (ls 
>> …/{,s}bin,
>> basically), and storing it in-line takes up too much screen and 
>> mind space for
>> my taste.
>
> "Program names" might even be too limited, if not too 
> shortsighted.  At the end
> of the day, programs are not necessarily stored in /bin/.  More 
> importantly,
> users don't necessarily look for programs, they could very well 
> be looking for a
> library.

Oh, sure, {,s}bin was just an example.  I don't really think 
there's a package manager that indexes only those two directories. 
'T would be silly.

> Extending the search with file listings might result in too much 
> noise, so
> instead we could have a separate command.  "guix which" for 
> instance, as

Or ‘guix where’ or guix whatever.

(16 days left for someone to implement ‘guix whatever’.)

> suggested Tobias, but since we are not just talking about 
> executables, maybe
> "guix filesearch" would be more appropriate.

Well, we can deathmatch about the name and the number of hyphens 
once it does something.  ;-)

> I haven't though through the details, but I am under the 
> impression that the
> file listing could be retrieve with the same mechanism as "guix 
> size", i.e. from
> the substitute index.  I think it would work well on the build 
> farm, without
> more complexity than just another entry to the substitute index.

What do you mean by substitute index?

By complexity, I meant: if it would depend on a network connection 
to the build farm (or elsewhere), at all.

And would this information be provided by a naked ‘guix publish’? 
I guess that depends on the meaning of ‘substitute index’.

Kind regards,

T G-R