metadata cache

[Anders F Björklund]

Rehan wrote:

> Thanks for explaining this issue. I now understand why smart seems  
> so clunky on yum based distros.
>
> Would it be possible to 'split' the cache into two files, e.g.  
> essential info and additional info. The essential info would  
> basically be the current metadata cache but only holding what is  
> absolutely necessary and the additional info would be looked up  
> only when needed (like description, group and such like). The idea  
> being that this would reduce the size of the main cache that is used.


It would be possible to do a separate SQL index, that would map  
"pkgKey" into "file offset".

Just that ElementTree doesn't help much with this, so it would need a  
separate indexing run.

> However it might be more work than it's worth what with there being  
> an sqlite alternative for yum.

Right, and what the "sqlitecachec"* module does is that it converts  
XML to SQL when needed...

So even if the repository doesn't use the db repodata, it can still  
be converted after fetch.

--anders

* a.k.a "yum-metadata-parser"