[opensuse-factory] Proposal on metadata fetching
Beta2 is much better than 10.1 concerning the speed of the package manager. But as mentioned by other users already it's still far behind debian concerning the speed of fetching metadata. Adding factory as an installation source takes at least 15 minutes with an average DSL connection. The big difference between Suse and Debian/Ubuntu is, that under Suse much more data get's fetched. So you can also search within package-descriptions etc, whereas under Ubuntu you have only package-names and files, but no description e.g. For a more detailed search you need apt-file. I think apt-file is compearable to the actual suse solution. My proposal (for 10.3 etc): Reduce downloaded metadata to package-names and RPM-content. Do not fetch descriptions, etc. Most users know the name of the file/RMP they want to install. An error tolerant search can help finding the right package. For a detailed search do not download metadata but query a server. E.g if im looking for the string "foobar" and content cannot be found in the local metadatafile, Suse should not download further metadata, but contact an official server, which does the search. I do not know, what kind of server we need, if 10 or 100 thousends of clients will start search queries, but I think this may be faster, than fetching so much metadata all the time. I also do not know how many data must be uploaded in order to get this system working, so maybe it's a very bad idea and not realizeable, but perhaps there is a chance. -- Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Marcel Hilzinger Linux New Media AG Süskindstr. 4 D-81929 München Tel: +49 (89) 99 34 11 0 Fax: +49 (89) 99 34 11 99 --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org
Marcel Hilzinger schrieb:
The big difference between Suse and Debian/Ubuntu is, that under Suse much more data get's fetched. So you can also search within package-descriptions etc, whereas under Ubuntu you have only package-names and files, but no description e.g. For a more detailed search you need apt-file. I think apt-file is compearable to the actual suse solution.
As a starting point, the YaST2 metadata could be compressed. Debian does that since ever, but YaST2 metadata were never compressed. The "packages" file in Factory is currently at 16 MB, a good bzip2 compression reduces it to 1.8 MB - almost 90% gone. I think that this should really be considered first because it is possible entirely without functionality loss and without complicating the architecture too much. The thing with the patterns for unneeded architectures is more a cosmetic thing because the pattern files are very small. But many users notice it because YaST displays the filenames of the downloaded metadata. For YUM metadata, there is not much to do because they are already compressed and it's a "standardized" format - it can be extended, but not changed in incompatible ways. Andreas --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org
On Tuesday 14 November 2006 07:46, Andreas Hanke wrote:
Marcel Hilzinger schrieb:
The big difference between Suse and Debian/Ubuntu is, that under Suse much more data get's fetched. So you can also search within package-descriptions etc, whereas under Ubuntu you have only package-names and files, but no description e.g. For a more detailed search you need apt-file. I think apt-file is compearable to the actual suse solution.
As a starting point, the YaST2 metadata could be compressed. Debian does that since ever, but YaST2 metadata were never compressed.
The "packages" file in Factory is currently at 16 MB, a good bzip2 compression reduces it to 1.8 MB - almost 90% gone.
I think that this should really be considered first because it is possible entirely without functionality loss and without complicating the architecture too much.
... Besides compression of metadata, the idea of central server that will contain all details of repositories is appealing because that will substantially simplify package management from user prospective. One preconfigured server to query for detailed information. The problem is, who will host such server, if even link to some repositories can be source of legal trouble. -- Regards, Rajko M. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org
participants (3)
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Andreas Hanke -
Marcel Hilzinger -
Rajko M