Re: [Fink-devel] Query a package's category

[Kevin W. <kw...@co...>]

Daniel Macks wrote:

> I would have thought that 'fink dumpinfo -fsection PACKAGENAME' would
> tell you, but -fsection doesn't seem implemented? Oops.However, you
> can 'fink dumpinfo -finfofile PACKAGENAME' and see the section
> embedded in the pathname.
> 
> dan
> 

Well, this works, and doesn't spike my CPU to 90%. However, to get the 
same results as iterating through each section (22 calls to Fink), I now 
have to iterate through all 6,444 individual packages and call this 
command (fink dumpinfo -fsection PACKAGENAME) each time: 6,444 calls to 
Fink, which I then must parse further by extracting the directory name 
from the output. I guess I have to pick my poison.

MacPorts includes the package category in its basic listing. Here's a 
sample from the command-line ("port list"):

zope-ploneerrorreporting       @0.11           zope/zope-ploneerrorreporting


It's useful from the command-line because you can see what categories 
are available without going to a website. How can I submit this as a 
feature request for Fink? For instance, the output could look like this:

p	 	ztrack 		1.0-1  		games 		Curses-based pseudo 3D driving game

I'm assuming that Fink would be able to parse its own data cache fairly 
quickly and include the category with the standard output--much faster 
than extracting the data as I currently am.

If I knew Perl, I'd submit a patch myself, but I presume this wouldn't 
be too difficult to implement for someone knowledgable about Fink's 
internals. However, if I'm wrong about its difficulty, or the Fink devs 
judge this an unneeded feature, then I understand.

Thanks!

--Kevin

-- 
Kevin Walzer
Code by Kevin
http://www.codebykevin.com