Hi Mark, Mark H Weaver <[email protected]> skribis:
> Bruno Haible <[email protected]> writes: > >> Mark H Weaver wrote: >>> If we add functionality that calls out to the network in response to a >>> package search, e.g. to query popularity ratings or package file >>> listings, we should make sure the user knows it's happening, and provide >>> a way to disable it. Some users may not want information about their >>> package searches to be leaked to the outside world. >> >> Good point. >> >> Would it be more acceptable, upon 'guix search', to download an incremental >> update of a package popularity database, and do the search locally? This >> way, only the fact that the user has been doing a 'guix search' would be >> leaked to the outside world, not the search term. > > Yes, that would address my concerns, although popularity ratings might > be compact enough and change slowly enough that it might be sufficient > to simply have them embedded in the Guix source code and manually > updated periodically. > > Popularity ratings would also be useful to set build priorities on our > build farms. > > The package file listings, on the other hand, are likely to be so large > that it's not practical to download an incremental update of all of > them. FWIW, I like that there’s a purely off-line mode for ‘guix search’, as is currently the case (after all, none of Guix relies on any single service so far, and I think that’s a nice property.) However, I think it’d be nice to have the option to enhance search results by resorting to external services—just like using a substitute service “enhances” the user experience. I agree that the approach should rather be to download a complete database and operate locally on it, rather than give the exact query to the server. Thanks, Ludo’.
