axs: A repository from leifwalsh

axs
===

Searches the index created by
apt-xapian-index.

Xapian (supposedly) does a great job of figuring out what
you want (unlike apt-cache search). This script uses that power to find
programs in the apt database.

Installing
==

You will need lazy_regex.py from my python
library. This is linked in as a submodule,
so you should be able to just run git submodule update --init pyleif and be
good to go.

Then, just symlink axs somewhere in your PATH:

 $ ln -s /home/leif/git/axs/axs /home/leif/bin/
 $ export PATH=$PATH:/home/leif/bin
 $ axs python
... stuff happens ...

Usage
=

From axs --help:

Usage: axs [options] <query>

Searches the index created by apt-xapian-index.  Xapian does a very good job of
figuring out what you want (unlike apt-cache search, which just searches text).  This
utility uses that power to find programs in the apt database.  Unfortunately, program
descriptions themselves, in fulltext at least, aren't stored in the index (or I can't
find them), so this program has to call apt-cache for those descriptions anyway.

Options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -n NUM, --limit=NUM   Maximum number of elements to display (default: 5)
  -L, --long            Show long descriptions (default: 3 lines)
  -i FILE, --index=FILE
                        Xapian index to parse (leave this alone)
  -d, --debug           Increase debugging level

Implementation headaches
=======

For some horrible reason, Xapian seems unwilling to give me back the plaintext
(in order) descriptions of packages. It will gladly send me back keywords from
the description in sorted order, but finding the correct permutation of these
is sort of hard.

Instead, I just farm out the work to apt-cache show to get descriptions.

Things that be broke
====

Xapian doesn’t know much about the packages other than their descriptions.
Therefore, if you search for, for example, jelly beans, and you’re really
looking for the package net-jelly-beans, Xapian will sometimes get confused
and pull up instead some obscure plugin for net-jelly-beans (let’s call it
libnjb-pooflavour.0) if that plugin happens to mention the words ‘jelly beans’
in its description more than the main package does.

Supposedly, there are plugins in the pipeline for apt-xapian-index, of which
some may help fix this problem. The project seems, in a lot of ways, dead, so I
don’t know when or if they will come out. If I get sick of work someday, I
might write some too.

leifwalsh/axs