version 0.57 searches both for names and contents by default

[Wit Wilinski]

The new upstream version, 0.57 has default search method changed from 'Name' to
'Name and description'. This is very slow and IMO should be reverted to the old
value.

Reproducing:
In synaptic window press ctrl-f or click 'search'.
Default method for 0.57 will be 'Description and Name', while all earlier
versions had the correct one selected - 'Name'

[Corey Burger (corey.burger)]

Rather than reverting, can we look at why search is slow and speed it up?

[Wit Wilinski (wit-wilinski)]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Rather than reverting, can we look at why search is slow and speed it up?

Searching in package description is a full text search in the whole package
database - it can't be speeded up simply. One way would be to put all package
information in an SQL database.

For now, better solution is to revert to searching by name only by default. If
someone wishes/has time;), it's easy to switch to other searching methods.

Selecting a slow search method as default may cause synaptic has a 'slow' or
'not responsive' opinion, which is not true.

BTW. Full text search (searching in package descriptions) causes high disk
activity, so synaptic's windows aren't redrawn properly. What about renicing
full text search process, to take more time, but still allow for user interaction?

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

Thanks for your bugreport.

This was really a concession to new users. I always (well, mostly always) use a
search for "name" only because it's faster and I generally know what I'm looking
for. Now consider a user how looks for a webserver. A default synaptic search
won't find anything.

Another problem is that the GUI is very inresponsive during the search. This
needs to be fixed.

What do you guys think about just adding a option? Default search field or
something? I was considering to just safe the last search type but I guess
that's too confusing most of the time.

Cheers,
 Michael

[Wit Wilinski (wit-wilinski)]

Option would be a good idea. As for speeding up full text searching, we could
convert the whole dpkg system to use SQLite instead of the old BerkleyDB. But
this would break compatibility - maybe someone can convince dpkg's makers to
make a step into innovation and use newer database ;)

[Michaël Arnauts (michael-arnauts)]

Or what would be a nice fix, remember the last value... So users who want to
search by Name, will only have to select it once.

[Corey Burger (corey.burger)]

There are 2 major issues with the current search.

1. The sorting of the results in alphabetically, not most useful
2. The searching is slow

If both of those were solved, then having name/description is not such a big deal.

[Pavel Rojtberg (rojtberg)]

(In reply to comment #3)
> I was considering to just safe the last search type but I guess
> that's too confusing most of the time.
I was just about to open a bug-report about that ^^ - do it.
If you think thats too confusing, make at least an option to turn it on

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

(In reply to comment #6)
> There are 2 major issues with the current search.
>
> 1. The sorting of the results in alphabetically, not most useful

How should the results be sorted?

[Wit Wilinski (wit-wilinski)]

(In reply to comment #8)
> (In reply to comment #6)
> > There are 2 major issues with the current search.
> >
> > 1. The sorting of the results in alphabetically, not most useful
>
> How should the results be sorted?
>
Actually I don't think that It's a problem - the order can be changed by the
user by clicking the desired treeview caption.

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

Thanks to all for your input.

I implemented load/save of the last search option. It will be part of the next
upload.

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

This problem is fixed in the current version in breezy. please reopen if you
still see problems.

[Carey Underwood (cwillu)]

I still don't understand why searching (including descriptions) should take more than a couple seconds.

cat /var/lib/apt/lists/* | grep vt100 finishes in under half a second, while synaptic's find for the same thing takes 7-8 seconds, and is unresponsive (update garbage under metacity, greyed out in compiz) during that time. Granted, part of that time is spent handling case insensitivity, and finding the package name, but even taking that into account I can still get <2 seconds for a fairly naive sequential search, getting the same results for every query I tried. And I think it's fair that I get to use the cache, seeing as synaptic seems to be holding this in memory (i.e., 7 seconds is the wall time for a search after I've run the same search several times).

The Add/Remove dialog is much more in line with what I'd expect, taking around 2 seconds to perform a search.