Sriram Narayanan wrote: > On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 12:38 AM, Shawn Walker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >>> I believe that Moinak's thoughts are : if the search operation is >>> pushed to the client (like, say, with rpm/apt), then the server would >>> become http, file, ftp, etc without needing a custom server behind >>> those services. >> The client already has search capability locally, so that seems a moot >> point. >> >> However, local search doesn't solve the problem of trying to search for >> things you don't even have. It also doesn't scale very well when you want >> to search a specific repository's contents. >> > > Thanks for the info, Shawn. It does seem that the server would need to > search an index instead of the client, though. > > apt's mechanism of pulling in catalogs and then searching them locally > seems scalable enough to not put the load of having an additional > service on the server. > > Sorry, I'm mentioning other existing packaging technologies because > that is what I know and understand (and these are what my peers know > and understand too).
If the client wants to search the contents of a repository without downloading all of the information it needs and indexing it, remote search becomes a necessity. As I said before, the client already has search, so I'm not sure why this is a sticking point. remote search is a value-add. >>> Yes, one may say that convincing mirror hosts to run custom servers >>> would be Belenix's headache, but given that we've always given to and >>> taken from the various opensolaris technologies, we see it to >>> everyone's advantage if we had a discussion first before going >>> elsewhere :) >> As we have already responded, this will eventually be possible. We fully >> intend mirrors to be able to serve package content. We have several bugs >> open to change our transport methodology to accommodate this. >> > > If there will someday be a depot-free future, I think that the client > will have to pull in the catalog and conduct the search. I myself see > no other alternative, but I'll wait and watch. The future is highly unlikely to be completely depot-free. The depot still provides many valuable bits of functionality that a static server cannot adequately provide. In particular, the publishing bits are likely to remain tied to the depot server. Mirroring will be depot-free in the future, to the extent that the contents of packages can be mirrored. However, certain other aspects will still require a depot server. I would encourage you to look at our bug list to figure out what direction we're moving in this area. >>> If well discussed in an open and amicable manner, upstream >>> contributions could actually happen in a nice manner. Sun has a good >>> track record on several projects on this front, after all. >> ...and that process would likely move very slowly. OpenSolaris has unique >> platform requirements and needs that would require changes that upstream >> projects would be unlikely to accept. Examples of this that come to mind >> are: our zfs integration, zones support, license entitlement, etc. >> > > I believe the apt port to OpenSolaris addresses almost all of those > above. The license entitlement is something that I'm not qualified to > comment on, though. I can't comment on Nexenta's apt, as I have no personal experience with it. But I do know that they have a very different approach than we do just from what I've read and seen in their flash demos. -- Shawn Walker _______________________________________________ pkg-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/pkg-discuss
