Hi, Thank you for your response ! This clears up most of my doubts. I was giving the parsing part unnecessarily high weightage, thanks for the clarification ! On Tue, Apr 6, 2021 at 1:54 AM Alexios Zavras <zvr+eellak [ at ] zvr [ dot ] gr> wrote: > > Hi, > > You are correct that the goal of this project is produce software, > not deploy or provide a service. > > As such, the project has nothing to do with a centralized database > keeping data for others. This would imply a service and introduces > a number of other problems, which are not part of this project. > > I think it would be easier to have the software based on abstractions > like "get_list_of_packages", "get_package_details" and > "get_package_source", which can be implemented for various distributions. > By far the easiest way to implement these are by using > the package managers -- that's what they were implemented for. > Trying to reverse engineer all of them to find out how they work > and develop software to use the underlying data is much more work, > resulting in much more fragile code. > > I, personally, know the details of Debian packages, > but I am blissfully ignorant when it comes to other distributions. > > I do not rule out this idea, but be prepared to spend a LOT of time > documenting and implementing lots of package manager functionality > for something that is a secondary task of the project. > Because you will obviously not simply _use_ the "DB files" as you write; > you would have to write code to find out which these are > and fetch them, etc. > > I'd hate to see student fail their project because they got too > much to do on a side task. > > On Mon, Apr 5, 2021, at 14:56, Vividh Mariya wrote: > > Hello ! > > I had a doubt regarding the PackageInfo WebApp project. You've > > mentioned about getting a pointer to the exact sources of a package > > using SWHID's in this mailing list before. Also, as far as I could > > tell, this project is supposed to be something that users can easily > > install on their own systems, or self-host on a vps somewhere, instead > > of providing a central service where users can go to. > > > > 1) Most mainstream distros do have some packages already added to the > > SWHID archive, but there are a lot of packages that are missing. Since > > every user of this software will be maintaining and updating their own > > copy of the database, will they be pulling down sources of every > > package, calculating the SWHID, and requesting to put it on the > > archive (if not already present), or should we have a central database > > where users can query to get the SWHID (if already present) ? > > > > 2) Regarding getting the package metadata of all distros, I had made a > > test script using that spins of docker containers of Ubuntu, Fedora > > and Arch Linux, uses the respective package managers, and get the > > package information. But while listing entire package lists, very > > little information is extracted. To get more detailed stuff like the > > link to the .deb / .rpm file, download size, md5 hash etc. we have to > > query it on a per package basis. > > Would it be viable ( and maybe faster ) to not use the package > > managers, instead get the DB files ( like > > http://mirror.rise.ph/archlinux/core/os/x86_64/core.db ) from a mirror > > and parse them directly ? > > > > ---- > > Λαμβάνετε αυτό το μήνυμα απο την λίστα: Λίστα αλληλογραφίας και > > συζητήσεων που απευθύνεται σε φοιτητές developers \& mentors έργων του > > Google Summer of Code - A discussion list for student developers and > > mentors of Google Summer of Code projects., > > https://lists.ellak.gr/gsoc-developers/listinfo.html > > Μπορείτε να απεγγραφείτε από τη λίστα στέλνοντας κενό μήνυμα ηλ. > > ταχυδρομείου στη διεύθυνση <gsoc-developers+unsubscribe [ at ] ellak [ dot ] gr > > <mailto:gsoc-developers%2Bunsubscribe%40ellak.gr>>. > > > > -- > -- zvr -
---- Λαμβάνετε αυτό το μήνυμα απο την λίστα: Λίστα αλληλογραφίας και συζητήσεων που απευθύνεται σε φοιτητές developers \& mentors έργων του Google Summer of Code - A discussion list for student developers and mentors of Google Summer of Code projects., https://lists.ellak.gr/gsoc-developers/listinfo.html Μπορείτε να απεγγραφείτε από τη λίστα στέλνοντας κενό μήνυμα ηλ. ταχυδρομείου στη διεύθυνση <gsoc-developers+unsubscribe [ at ] ellak [ dot ] gr>.