RFE: port search should search name, description and long_description

[raimue@…]

At the moment, port search only searches in the name of a port. It would be more helpful if it would also look in description and long_description.

The result for 'port search foo' should be the same as for:

port echo name:foo or description:foo or long_description:foo

(Given that we eliminate duplicates, #15433).

[raimue@…]

Fixed in r37119.

[landonf@…]

This actually makes 'search' pretty useless if you use a common term. Take 'tex' as an example -- port search tex returns 391 ports, but almost none of them are related to TeX.

[landonf@…]

Cc Me!

[raimue@…]

Replying to landonf@macports.org:

This actually makes 'search' pretty useless if you use a common term. Take 'tex' as an example -- port search tex returns 391 ports, but almost none of them are related to TeX.

Hm, there is port echo name:tex to search in port names only, but that is not so obvious. How should it be changed?

We could add flags to specify the fields to search for:

port search tex
port search --name tex
port search --name --description --long_description tex

Or add an option to port echo to get more output than just the name.

[raimue@…]

Please comment what should be done here. I don't want to change the behavior again in the next release.

[blb@…]

The old search sometimes wasn't helpful because there are lots of things that should match but didn't because of the limits. The new one is somewhat the opposite, potentially giving too many results. I prefer the new way since to me more info is better, but some may disagree.

The big problem here is that we don't really know how most people use search. One way to find out is to ship 1.7.0 with search like this and see if there are lots of tickets filed against it. If so, we can always switch back to the old method in 1.7.1 until a better solution is found.

[mcklaren@…]

Replying to raimue@…:

Replying to landonf@macports.org:

This actually makes 'search' pretty useless if you use a common term. Take 'tex' as an example -- port search tex returns 391 ports, but almost none of them are related to TeX.

Hm, there is port echo name:tex to search in port names only, but that is not so obvious. How should it be changed?

We could add flags to specify the fields to search for:

port search tex
port search --name tex
port search --name --description --long_description tex

Or add an option to port echo to get more output than just the name.

I see fine this option, I think that port search tex could be a default form, for example, port search tex = port search --name tex then add 2 new options port search --description and port search --long-description, too i will add best a --long-description that --long_description, IMHO

[raimue@…]

Moving to milestone 1.7.1, so we can revisit it again after 1.7.0 is released and we got some more feedback on 'port search'.

[andrew@…]

This sort of search problem is rather common. My suggestion would be to add options for perl-like regular expression searching, as well as the --name, --description, and --long_description options.

That way, if searching for TeX, you can use

port search --rexexp "/\btex\b/i"

to search, case-insensitively, for TeX on a word boundary.

Just my $0.02 - and at the current Canada to US exchange rate, it may not be worth much... :-)

[clayton@…]

I would agree that the new search can be helpful but it is bringing back way to much information. Another example is the ack (p5-app-ack) port.

$ port search ack
...
Found 673 ports.

That more than fills up the buffer on my terminal :). I like the idea of having the options for searching --name, --description and --long-description. I'm inclined to say that it should search --name by default also.

[raimue@…]

I added some new options to port search on trunk, check port help search to see them all. Special options are now --exact, --glob, --regex to choose match style; --case-sensitive should be obvious. The other options specify which fields are searched.

Relevant revisions are r44071, r44073, r44077, r44079, r44080, r44082, r44083, r44084.

[raimue@…]

Moving to 1.8.0 as this also includes some refactoring parts.

[raimue@…]

The default was changed in r48007 to port search being equivalent to port search --name --description, which gives much better results for some search terms, e.g. "haskell".

If this gives too much results, it can be narrowed down with the new options.