Re: Package Grep source and Program not installed functionality

[Brian Dessent <brian at dessent dot net>]

John Morrison wrote:

> > This already exists, it's spelled "cygcheck -p".
> 
> I didn't know.  Thanks for the sarcasm.  God I'd forgotten just how nasty
> this list can be.  And all for wanting to make cygwin a 'nicer'
> environment for new/inexperienced users.

Seriously, no snark intended.  You asked about adding feature X to
package-grep.cgi, but feature X already exists and is used by cygcheck
to implement -p.

As far as auto-suggesting things when commands aren't found, I think
there are a lot of implications to consider:

- privacy aspects of every user's misspelled commands ending up in
sourceware logs
- latency aspects of delaying the prompt by a HTTP roundtrip and a
sourceware grep for each missing command
- increased load on sourceware
- implications for offline/disconnected users
- large amounts of output when a command matches a string in lots of
packages

As far as I know ubuntu can simply query the local APT database which is
a different prospect entirely than initiating a HTTP request to a remote
server.

Brian