[Python-Dev] PEP 376 proposed changes for basic plugins support (original) (raw)

Antoine Pitrou solipsis at pitrou.net
Tue Aug 3 13:48:39 CEST 2010

On Tue, 03 Aug 2010 10:28:07 +0200 "M.-A. Lemburg" <mal at egenix.com> wrote:

> > Don't forget system packaging tools like .deb, .rpm, etc., which do not > generally take kindly to updating such things. For better or worse, the > filesystem is our "central database" these days.

I don't think that's a problem: the SQLite database would be a cache like e.g. a font cache or TCSH command cache, not a replacement of the meta files stored in directories. Such a database would solve many things at once: faster access to the meta-data of installed packages, fewer I/O calls during startup, more flexible ways of doing queries on the meta-data, needed for introspection and discovery, etc.

If the cache can become stale because of system package management tools, how do you avoid I/O calls while checking that the database is fresh enough at startup?

Regards

Antoine.

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