Re: New module proposal: tracker

[Martyn Russell <martyn lanedo com>]

On 18/08/09 18:04, Lennart Poettering wrote:
> On Tue, 18.08.09 17:44, Martyn Russell (martyn lanedo com) wrote:
>
> > > And that exists? What providers are there besides the indexer?
> >
> > Yes, there are some in progress right now.
>
> So there's nothing usable yet?

No :)

> > Right but source is less important and as I have said earlier in this
> > thread (and others agree) we should probably be ignoring source
> > checkouts.
>
> This is not about source code.
>
> It's the same for photos. I place my photos in "~/photos/2009/Gran
> Canaria/img_4711.jpg" not in "~/img_4711.jpg". And I edit them there
> too.
>
> It's the same for music. I place my music in
> "~/muzhak/Brazil/Sebastião Tapajós/Sebastião Tapajós - Aquarelas do
> Brasil/Afro Samba.mp3", not in "~/Afro Samba.mp3".

You are right of course, it is more about inotify not being good enough, 
but at the moment, Tracker has one file for doing monitoring and an API 
which allows us to switch to something new VERY easily. When that 
happens, we will adapt to it. Until then, we make the best with what we 
have.

Tracker also shouldn't be excluded purely based on one small part 
relying on a technology which isn't quite good enough, remember we used 
to have FAM and a bunch of other notification systems before which were 
much worse.

I am sure Tracker isn't the first and won't be the last project in such 
a situation.

> > > So you are telling me file system notification does not matter much
> > > for Tracker's usefulness? That's news to me indeed. But of course
> > > leads to the question: what is it then what it offers that desn't need
> > > file system notification? Please explain.
> >
> > Well, for a start, we don't index . prefixed directories, so for
> > applications that want to store their bookmarks, contacts, etc they can
> > use tracker for that. The Nepomuk ontology describes all of that and how
> > the data relates. Those updates do not come from file system updates,
> > they come from applications sending us data.
>
> I guess a problem here is that nobody except the Tracker people
> themselves even know what an ontology or Nepomuk actually is. Just
> throwing around buzzwords that nobody understands doesn't really help
> dumb people like me actually get a grip on what tracker actually is,
> and help them understand that it isn't what they thought it was.

You could say the same about pulseaudio  ;)

--
Regards,
Martyn