[packagekit] APT backend and xapian

[Richard Hughes]

On Mon, 2007-10-29 at 11:25 +0100, Tom Parker wrote:
> On 29/10/2007, Sebastian Heinlein <glatzor at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> > Michael Vogt thinks about implementing a hook infrastructure into
> > libapt. This way we could perhaps use the apt-xapian-index work of Enrio
> > Zini in the PackageKit backend to get a fast and powerfull search
> > infrastructure.
> 
> Given that there have been a number of possible search implementations
> proposed for the apt backend (plain apt, my sqlite work,
> apt-xapian-index) it might be a good idea to provide some way to
> switch between them at compile time.

Sane.

> Motivating things for this:
> 1) All of the options currently have downsides and upsides (slow
> building of extra db's vs. slow searching choices; apt-xapian-index is
> still a WIP; etc), and none of them really stand out as "the best" for
> all at the moment.
> 2) Reducing the dependancies for those that don't want the extra
> stuff. I'd consider this a minor point (1 is *much* more important),
> but it's nice.

Sure. xapian isn't that random of deps, so I wouldn't worry too much
about this.

> This would allow us to play around with the different search
> mechanisms, and make it easy if someone comes up with a better one in
> the future to plug that one in instead.

Agreed. I think it's sane at this point to commit apt-insane, apt-old,
apt-python into git and then we'll try and evaluate pros and cons as
they develop.

If anyone wants commit, yell, and you can share the devel server.

Richard.