High level package search interfaces 45 mins including questions: ~35 mins of talk Goal: show that there are problems we don't usually think about, nor we are aware of Introduction: what the talk is about Showing non-technical problems that can happen inside Debian and we ren't always aware of October 30, 2010 Enrico Zini (enrico@debian.org)

A story of award winning code Part of the code that I'm going to show has won the first prize at the ScraperWiki #hhhmcr day. It's the code I've been flogging you for years, and all I got was: “cool! Enrico's giving another funny talk” See that you pay attention this time!

How can software-center work?

It's not just software-center

goplay: game finder

axi-cache: command line search $ axi-cache --help Usage: axi-cache [options] command [args] Query the Apt Xapian index. Commands: search commands: … axi-cache search [terms] start a new search Options: --version show program's version number and exit -h, --help show this help message and exit -s SORT, --sort=SORT sort by the given value, as listed in /var/lib/apt- xapian-index/values --tags show matching tags, rather than packages --tabcomplete=TYPE suggest words for tab completion of the current command line (type is 'plain' or 'partial') --last use 'show --last' to limit tab completion to only the packages from the last search results

fuss-launcher: application launcher

The backend: apt-xapian-index /var/lib/apt-xapian-index Fast Already contains a lot of information Self documenting Even more information can be fed to it

The backend: apt-xapian-index A tour of the backend

The future More plugins Popcon: Locally harvested data, to sort by last usage Global scores, to sort by popularity Last installed/upgraded times

The future MOAR APPS! Too much freedom? Use imagination! Find your use cases! Scratch your itches!