1. 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

2. 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!

3. How can software-center work?

4. It's not just software-center

5. goplay: game finder

6. 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

7. fuss-launcher: application launcher

8. 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

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

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

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