LWN: Comments on "A high-level search interface for Debian packages"

A high-level search interface for Debian packages

ojwb — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 12:37:18 +0000

The search on packages.debian.org is also powered by Xapian.

A high-level search interface for Debian packages

smemrobo — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 19:26:45 +0000

I always use packages.debian.org/name_of_package and filter of the GUI... it's a great tool...

A high-level search interface for Debian packages

tack — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 22:14:45 +0000

I've done a bit of work with Xapian. It's really a fantastic, well designed, light and fast full-text search engine. The API is intuitive and it has that Just Works quality that seems rare these days.

A high-level search interface for Debian packages

job — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 10:31:04 +0000

Most of the full text search interfaces for software packages has been useless. They take a lot of memory and when you search for simple terms you either get a hundred false positives or no hits at all.

That does not mean the idea is bad, just that the problem lies in its execution. Make it nimble and make sure you have everyday use cases, and that you do it well. It's may not be a very rock star programming problem to solve, but as Google has showed, search can be a very useful user interface.

A high-level search interface for Debian packages

cowsandmilk — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 22:58:34 +0000

considering how much coverage lwn gave notmuch ( http://notmuchmail.org/ ), I'm surprised you hadn't heard of xapian

A high-level search interface for Debian packages

ccurtis — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 19:50:59 +0000

My first impression is always that it's a Ximian specific tool.

A high-level search interface for Debian packages

nix — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 18:53:33 +0000

I too thought it was something to do with the monster which is xalan-j.

A high-level search interface for Debian packages

nye — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 16:02:19 +0000

I'd actually seen the package name and assumed for some reason that it was something related to the Apache project - one of those gargantuan java packages that don't integrate with anything native and can't be configured correctly by mere mortals.

This description, on the other hand, sounds like an actually useful piece of software.

So no, it's not just you.

A high-level search interface for Debian packages

Seegras — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 13:27:47 +0000

Actually, one of the things that kept me from noticing it ist the name: Xapian.

It sounds as if it is something complicated (X.400 API Association maybe?); it sounds "Enterprise" (which I again associate with: "Can do everything, but you have to program it yourself, and by the way, it uses an awkward language/API/config-language").

Might this have been a problem with other users too?

Cheers
Seegras