Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 09:24:12 -0400 From: Bill Vermillion <bv@wjv.com> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: New FreeBSD packaging system Message-ID: <20070515132412.GA31934@wjv.com> In-Reply-To: <20070515120019.8B59016A416@hub.freebsd.org> References: <20070515120019.8B59016A416@hub.freebsd.org>
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Throwing caution to the wind and speaking without thinking about what was being said on Tue, May 15, 2007 at 12:00 , freebsd-hackers-request@freebsd.org blurted this: [much text deleted as I only am going to comment on one part - wjv] > Message: 6 > Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 23:34:52 -0700 > From: Bert JW Regeer <xistence@0x58.com> > Subject: Re: New FreeBSD package system (a.k.a. Daemon Package System > (dps)) > To: Garrett Cooper <youshi10@u.washington.edu> > Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org .... > > On May 14, 2007, at 10:03 PM, Garrett Cooper wrote: > > > Bert JW Regeer wrote: > >> On May 12, 2007, at 5:14 AM, Philippe Laquet wrote: > >>> Stanislav Sedov a ?crit : > >>>> On Fri, 11 May 2007 02:10:05 +0200 > >>>> Ivan Voras <ivoras@fer.hr> mentioned: > >>>>> - I think it's time to give up on using BDB+directory tree > >>>>> full of text files for storing the installed packages > >>>>> database, and I propose all of this be replaced by a > >>>>> single SQLite database. SQLite is public domain (can be > >>>>> slurped into base system), embeddable, stores all data in > >>>>> a single file, lightweight, fast, and can be used to do > >>>>> fancy things such as reporting. ... > >> I am able to understand many of the gripes with using a databases, > >> and have to import yet another code base into the FreeBSD base, > >> however as one of the young ones, and knowing sed/awk/grep and > >> SQL, I prefer SQL over having to process hundreds of text files > >> using text processing tools. It saddens me each time I run one of > >> the pkg_* tools that needs to parse the flat file structure since > >> it takes so long. I have friends running Ubuntu and their apt-get > >> returns results much faster. .... > > True. I was thinking of backup, and recreation from scratch, > > considering that the database wouldn't be more than a few megs. In > > place replacement just seems like a hairy situation sometimes.. ... > >> The experience I got from running SVN with BDB as the back-end > >> database to store my data, I say no thanks. In that case I would > >> much rather stick with the flat text files than go with a database. > > Well, a few comments: > > -Text files are bloated. Although many people are for XML, it > > takes much longer to parse than binary databases. > /var/db/pkg/ are all plain flat text files. I am not a supporter of > XML at all. > > -Custom text files require custom format capable parsers, no > > matter what the format, and the less coverage a parser has, > > the more probable the likelihood of bugs IMO. > We already have these in the pkg_* functions, so i'd hope they are > fairly solid! ... > I am not opposed to text files, other than that they can be slow. I > am against BDB because over the years, in my experience they have > shown to be extremely unreliable and easily corrupted. If we are > going to be making changes to the way the ports/packages store the > information about what exists, it should be done in such a way that > it is scalable and at the same time extensible (is this a word?). So why not take the same approach that is used in the password and shadow files. That way you have a plain text editable file which then builds the pwd.db and spwd.db files that are used by the system. Or am I missing something there. > Bert JW Regeer Bill -- Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com
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