[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
bug#35551: guix search
From: |
Ludovic Courtès |
Subject: |
bug#35551: guix search |
Date: |
Fri, 10 May 2019 12:17:30 +0200 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/26.2 (gnu/linux) |
Hi Bruno,
Bruno Haible <address@hidden> skribis:
>> I would hope that ‘guix search’ and ‘guix package --list-available’ are
>> easier than anything else, and that people value the idea of doing
>> things locally. Also, a local search gives the right result while a
>> remote service might give results for a different Guix revision.
>>
>> Is there any specific reason why you were uncomfortable with these
>> commands? I’m curious how we could improve the user experience here.
>
> Yes. I was looking for a package that contains the 'ssh' command.
> $ guix search ssh | less
> returns libssh, libssh2, guile2.0-ssh, guile-ssh, sshpass, ...,
> emacs-counsel-tramp.
> The answer I was looking for was 'openssh', but it was hidden
> among 66 packages.
I see.
> A search is good if the relevant results for the user occur
> among the first screen.
>
> Possible improvements include:
>
> 1) If the search term is X and installing the package would cause
> a program named X to appear in $PATH, then list this package first.
>
> This rule would have listed 'openssh' first. Also, for 'guix search gcc',
> it would now make 'gcc-toolchain' appear first (right?).
I agree that this would be great, but we don’t know beforehand what
commands a package provides. For that we’d need to resort to an
external service providing this info.
> 2) Another heuristic for presenting the "best" hits first:
> Sort the graph of the packages (using dependencies as graph edges).
> Then present the "base" packages (the packages which don't depend on
> other packages) first.
>
> This will likely make packages that are bindings (guile-ssh, ruby-net-ssh,
> etc.) appear after openssh.
This sounds like an interesting option, at least when one is searching
for an application and not for a library.
> 3) If the resulting list is longer than one screenful, present only the
> names, not names + details. Like
> $ guix search ssh | grep '^name:'
> would do.
> Even without the improvements 1) and 2), the command
> $ guix search ssh | grep '^name:' | grep ssh | sort
> produces a one-screenful result that I could have evaluated in 10 seconds.
OK, though you would have been unable to see the descriptions.
Another option I thought of would be to display only the 10 results with
the highest relevance by default, when stdout is a terminal.
Thoughts?
Thanks,
Ludo’.
- bug#35551: package gcc does not depend on binutils and glibc, (continued)
- bug#35551: package gcc does not depend on binutils and glibc, Ludovic Courtès, 2019/05/07
- bug#35551: package gcc does not depend on binutils and glibc, Ricardo Wurmus, 2019/05/09
- bug#35551: package gcc does not depend on binutils and glibc, Bruno Haible, 2019/05/09
- bug#35551: package gcc does not depend on binutils and glibc, Ricardo Wurmus, 2019/05/10
- bug#35551: package gcc does not depend on binutils and glibc, Ludovic Courtès, 2019/05/10
- bug#35551: guix search, Bruno Haible, 2019/05/10
- bug#35551: guix search,
Ludovic Courtès <=
- bug#35551: guix search, Bruno Haible, 2019/05/10
- bug#35551: guix search, Ludovic Courtès, 2019/05/10
- bug#35551: guix search, Bruno Haible, 2019/05/10
- bug#35551: guix search, Ludovic Courtès, 2019/05/10
- bug#35551: guix search, Mark H Weaver, 2019/05/10
- bug#35551: guix search, Bruno Haible, 2019/05/10
- bug#35551: guix search, Tobias Geerinckx-Rice, 2019/05/10
- bug#35551: guix search, Mark H Weaver, 2019/05/11
- bug#35551: guix search, Mark H Weaver, 2019/05/11
- bug#35551: guix search, Ludovic Courtès, 2019/05/13