Re: [dev] man and man-db

From: Szymon Olewniczak <szymon.olewniczak_AT_rid.pl>
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2013 22:33:32 +0100

On Tue, Nov 05, 2013 at 10:58:58AM +0000, Raphaël Proust wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 11:45 AM, Szymon Olewniczak
> <szymon.olewniczak_AT_rid.pl> wrote:
> > Which db engines
> > do you consider of being suckless?
>
> I (as in “myself”, not as in “the suckless community”) think file
> based storage is a DB that sucks less than most systems out there.
But it has some disadvantages. For example searching
database, without indexes can be very slow. Another issue rise when you
have huge files that cannot be fully loaded to RAM. When you would relay only
on the kernel, you could easily slow down your system with lots of
unnessesery IO operations. So when you think about this in that
way, you will realize that some database engine can be useful.

> However, I would argue that the file abstraction is the important bit,
> not the implementation (i.e. if you have a file interface that does
> not rely on usual files can be close enough to the suckless philosophy
> (depending on the implementation). E.g. procfs is a database of the
> running processes on top of which is is reasonably easy to building
> clean, portable scripts and programs that do not suck too much. Other
> examples: devices in /dev, network connections in Plan9's /net.
Great idea. I'll look at it.

BR,
Szymon
Received on Tue Nov 05 2013 - 22:33:32 CET