[pacman-dev] Pacman speed improvement

[Aaron Griffin]

The sluggishness due to file reading is well known.  I've heard
complaints about it for the past... 4 years.  Everyone seems to have
their own solution.

Here's the thing: we're trying.

Soon, I want to replace all package access with calls to the pkg_get_*
accessor functions which will read the files on demand.  This will
help minimize the number of needed files as much as possible, as each
will only be read just before it is needed.

As for changes to the actual backend, you are free to submit patches.
It should be as simple as modifying be_files.c do some be_<whatever>.c
(be == 'backend').

Thanks for the input,
Aaron

PS I found your mail hard to follow due to lack of newlines... were
they stripped somehow, or is it gmail doing that?