[Rule-list] Again on RULE app database

[Marco Fioretti]

Hello,

Thanks to Martin and Larry for offering to host and implement the database

Personally, I know Perl better than PHP, but either one is fine, so
I'm inclined to gladly accept Larry's contribution, on the basis that
both hosting and his programming time are available earlier, if I
understood correctly.

Some extra note on this, also to answer to somebody else comments:

the database should make possible to know how much HDD space will be
needed by a user selected combination of application and by all the
packages/libraries coming along to satisfy dependencies (and the base
system also, of course)

I say disk space and not RAM too because the first *is* known for
sure, the second depends from how many applications one tries to run
simultaneously, and from how big are the files they are processing, so
it's much more difficult (IMHO) to code something that will give a
meaningful answer to this. The database should still give the RAM
needs of each single app, though, and all the other info I mentioned
in the original post, either internally, or pointing to where it is 

Calculating how much space is needed on disk is possible by having in
each record fields 

        1) disk space of that app/library/package
        2) which app/library packages this app depends from

With this available, calculating total space is a matter of adding up
each package, either directly selected or brought in by dependencies,
unless already counted.

It would also be very nice to know the relative impact of each
package, i.e. "combination so and so takes 50 megs too much: I can
trim it down, according to the database, either by removing these ten
self contained, totally independent apps, or only BIG_APP, because 
then would remain 60 megs of libraries and such not needed by anybody
else"

        Ciao,
                Marco Fioretti
                RULE project leader
  
-- 
Human beings act intelligently only after they have exhausted the
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