[pacman-dev] Backend DB [was: Hypotetic pacman's db structure]

[Nagy Gabor]

Hi!
When I started to work with pacman, I also hated this db structure,
because of its inefficiency.
But now, I'm not sure that it is inefficient. I don't have too much
experience with "dbms"s, but after pkgcache is loaded, I cannot imagine
radically faster solution than the current[*].
So we should compute the full-load-time of the pkgcache, my guess: 3-4
sec. Which is not too much (in case of -Su for example); but I'm sure
that this will be less then running pkgconfig. So we are
talking about seconds; and I dunno if the db change would worth the
effort. I'm not sure that would be even faster (see [*]) (keeping
pkgcache is needless with a dbms imho).
I remember the results of my "time pacman -R foo" tests (after empty
disk cache): "running ldconfig" caused at least 60% (!) of the running
time. Then I said: ok, we can speed up this a bit, but we won't see
anything (because of ldconfig)
However, we can speed up the "pkgcache loading time" of sync repos, as
Vmiklos said.
Bye, ngaba