Re: overhaul apropos(1) interface

[Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@usta.de>]

Hi Kristaps,

Kristaps Dzonsons wrote on Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 01:07:20AM +0100:

> I'm working on the final parts of this check-in, so please hold off
> on this file!

I cannot; i need to get this working in the OpenBSD tree ASAP,
i.e. tomorrow.  The logical and and or are not critical for me
right now, i can do without those for some time, but i need a
working mandocdb-apropos toolchain in-tree to build upon.

Ports hackathons are short, and i want to get on as fast as
possible with the following critical path:

 1) get mandocdb working on single directories
    to produce databases in the macro-format,
    i.e. with types like TYPE_An, TYPE_Cd
 2) get apropos to work with that, such that the
    databases can be used
 3) get rid of the most glaring bugs
    and complete backward compatibility
 4) integrate the man.conf parser into mandocdb
    such that mandocdb can walk the MANPATH
    just like makewhatis(8) does
 5) integrate the man.conf parser into apropos such that
    mandoc-apropos gets useable as a real apropos replacement
 6) rudimentary formatted page parsing in mandocdb
 7) integrate mandocdb into pkg_add such that it gets
    useable as a real makewhatis replacement

I realized in Ljubljana that this is more work than i thought
before, and i can't hold off, especially not this week, or i will
surely miss the 5.1 release.

Maybe you can hold off and bring in the and/or stuff
afterwards, i.e. after the patches i have posted so far?
You need not wait long, i would *gladly* push all my stuff
tomorrow in the morning, and then you have clean earth to
till and to adjust your work to it.

> It's by no means finished; as mentioned in the source checkin,
> I'll post to tech@ when the implementation is feature complete.

Sure, no doubt, but blocking system integration at a critical
time to implement optional, fancy features is a bad idea!

> Consider, to gauge the complexity:
> 
>  apropos Ar == foo -a Ar =~ baz
> 
> (I don't care at all about the connecting syntax, ==, etc., so long
> as it's regular.  Your notation is not extensible to
> case-insensitive matching: can one extend to include these?)

It is.

ischwarze@isnote $ cd /usr/share/man                                           
ischwarze@isnote $ apropos.m Nm~^b.e$
BCE(4) - Broadcom BCM4401 10/100 Ethernet device
BGE(4) - Broadcom BCM57xx/BCM590x 10/100/Gigabit Ethernet device
ischwarze@isnote $ apropos.m Nm~^B.e$ 
ischwarze@isnote $ apropos.m Nm,i~^B.e$
BCE(4) - Broadcom BCM4401 10/100 Ethernet device
BGE(4) - Broadcom BCM57xx/BCM590x 10/100/Gigabit Ethernet device

That's not a mockup, that's what i'm running right now.

However, i propose that substring match always be case-insensitive.
Substring match is a simplification for daily wear and tear
and doesn't need such complexity.  If case-insensitive substring
match drowns you in noise, just use regex matching - done.

> Anyway, the "AND" is tricky: each file's evaluation state must be
> retained for all keyword entries (which have no guarantee on
> ordering) then post-operated.  Thus, I'm maintaining evaluation
> trees during the parse.  The goal is to make the trivial case -- "Ar
> foo", say -- as fast as in the simple implementation before.  (I
> guarantee the trivial case by the partial evaluation.)
> 
> Anyway, I anticipate a few days til I get the final checkins.  The
> code is not tricky in implementation (not much, anyway) and
> guarantees arbitrary expressions with well-defined compute time.
> 
> I'm also not at all married to the filenames, but let's hold off for
> a bit more as I get these chunks into place.  apropos_db.c is fine
> by me, for the record.

Sounds good, except that a hackathon is a bad time to make me wait.

Thanks for your understanding (and your work, above all!),
  Ingo
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