New FreeBSD package system (a.k.a. Daemon Package System (dps))

[Ivan Voras]

Peter Jeremy wrote:
> On 2007-May-11 02:10:05 +0200, Ivan Voras <ivoras at fer.hr> wrote:
>> - I think it's time to give up on using BDB+directory tree full of text
>> files for storing the installed packages database,
> 
> Why?

- no strict format
- slow
- not transaction safe
- harder to use then SQL (yes, relatively, but many younger people know 
SQL better than grep).

>> and I propose all of
>> this be replaced by a single SQLite database.
> 
> I'll agree with Julian on this one.  When it comes to maintenance, you
> can't beat a collection of documented text files.  As a good example
> of why non-text databases for system configuration information aren't
> a good idea, I suggest you google "windows registry" :-)

They fixed in Win2000 and newer version (mostly by using a sane file 
system instead of FAT32).


> We don't want to unnecessarily increase the size of the base system.
> SQLite is also changing at a fairly rapid rate - which is incompatible
> with the FreeBSD release cycle.  There have been 6 releases of SQLite
> so far this year.  This would lead to a situation where even if we
> imported SQLite, we would still need an SQLite port for people who
> needed a more up-to-date version.

Since fancy new features of sqlite are not needed here, I'd suggest 
importing the latest 2.x release, which hasn't changed for quite some time.

>> as reporting. The current pkg_info's behaviour that takes *noticable*
>> *time* to generate 1 line of output per package is horrible in this day
>> and age.
> 
> After warming up the cache, I get one line every 1.5msec.  Before that,
> I get one line every 15-20msec which isn't that bad.

I don't think the "common usage pattern here" includes warming up the 
pkg cache :) If you don't think 15 ms per line is bad performance, then 
we'll just agree do disagree :)

> Relying on undocumented features of tools is rarely a good idea.  tar

BSDtar is maintained by "our people".

> has other disadvantages (particularly the lack of random access) as a
> ports archive format.  ZIP was suggested as an alternative.  I also
> question the combination of "sane", "easy to parse" and "XML".

Alternatives to XML are:

- binary format (yuck)
- another plain text format (hacks such as concatenating existing 
metadata "files" in the .tar - also yuck).

des@ mentioned putting metadata info at the front of the file - I don't 
see how this would help. The most common operation with binary packages 
*over the network* is "pkg_add -r", which will need to read it whole 
anyway, and it would help greatly for things such as installers from CD 
media. (Querying a bunch of packages over the network for their 
properties, one by one, is not a good idea, but it is on a local media).

Anyway, I'm not going to do it, so I'll try and stop bikeshedding :)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/attachments/20070511/7ef422d1/signature-0001.pgp