Looking for speed increases in "make index" and pkg_version for ports

[Matthew Seaman]

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Stephen Montgomery-Smith wrote:
> I have been thinking a lot about looking for speed increases for "make
> index" and pkg_version and things like that.  So for example, in
> pkg_version, it calls "make -V PKGNAME" for every installed package. Now
> "make -V PKGNAME" should be a speedy operation, but the make has to load
> in and analyze bsd.port.mk, a quite complicated file with about 200,000
> characters in it, when all it is needing to do is to figure out the
> value of the variable PKGNAME.

pkg_version is one thing -- but to build the INDEX you need to extract
at least the values of the following variables:

      PKGNAME
      .CURDIR
      PREFIX
      COMMENT
      DESCR
      MAINTAINER
      CATEGORIES
      EXTRACT_DEPENDS
      PATCH_DEPENDS
      FETCH_DEPENDS
      BUILD_DEPENDS
      RUN_DEPENDS
      LIB_DEPENDS

Plus you need to grep in the referenced pkg-descr file for any WWW
links.  I also extract the values of:

      MASTER_PORT
      .MAKEFILE_LIST
      SUBDIR

for my FreeBSD::Portindex stuff.

Trouble is, by the time you've extracted all that lot, you have pretty
much done the same level of variable processing as you would were you
actually going to build the port.

One thing that would speed up this process would be a make option
to just do parsing of the Makefile and variable expansion, without
calling stat(2) on all the various sources and dependencies involved.

For instance:

happy-idiot-talk:...ports/databases/mysql-connector-java:% truss make -V PKGNAME |& grep stat | wc -l
      49

It is quite instructive to see what files make(1) touches while doing
that.  At least half of them are irrelevant if all make(1) is going to
do is print out the values of some variables.  Multiply that by 17,000
and it adds up to a big waste of effort.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

- -- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       7 Priory Courtyard
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PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Ramsgate
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