Re: [Tracker] following progress - no info for long time?

[Martyn Russell <martyn lanedo com>]

On 27/09/11 14:04, Rainer M Krug wrote:
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> On 27/09/11 14:52, JÃrg Billeter wrote:
> > On Tue, 2011-09-27 at 12:37 +0200, Rainer M Krug wrote:
> > > On 27/09/11 12:07, Martyn Russell wrote:
> > > > The crawling stage can take some time depending on what
> > > > locations you index and how many directories you have there.
> > >
> > > What is "some time"? I have started tracker thias morning, and it
> > > is still crawling recursively "/" (I know, it is not recommended,
> > > but it should not cause any problems, I guess.
> >
> > It makes no sense at all trying to index directories such as /dev,
> > /proc, and /sys (and more).
>
> Agreed -
> exactly for this reason, I exclude the following directories from
> indexing:
>
> /root
> /dev
> /var
> /sys
> /tmp
> /proc

Just so you know. The larger the list of ignored directories, the longer 
and less efficient we are. Usually because each directory is checked 
against an ignore list and ignore glob patterns.

I would simply remove all places which are not interesting and only 
include those which are.

> > I don't consider it worthwhile debugging anything like this. Kernel
> > filesystems may have slightly different behavior and you really
> > don't want to index files such as /proc/self/mem.
>
>
> The reason why I am keen on indexing / as well is documentation.There

Documentation is usually in /usr/share somewhere. Again, I would heavily 
advise you only add locations of specific directories you're interested 
in, not entire top level locations like /.

> are several programs which install documentation in pdf and html
> format, which I want to have included in the index. In addition,
> indexing config files makes it easier to find certain configuration
> files, even if the actual name is not known. The same applies for
> documentation in man format. To use a central indexing tool which
> gives me all documentation based on a certain search, let them be in
> /local or /home, makes much more sense for me then having to search in
> man, tracker, locate and others to get this information. Effectively,
> not being able to index / (with exclusion of the above mentioned
> directories) makes an indexing service for me much less useful.
>
> > I suggest you to fix your configuration and try again.
>
> If you really think that / should not be indexed, then I would
> *strongly* suggest to make it impossible to add / to the to be indexed
> directories.

I think that's the wrong approach. We don't know what embedded devices 
or distributions Tracker may be used on and an ignore on / like that 
feels like the wrong way to deal with the issue.

We could of course add some sort of warning.

> To reiterate - I really like tracker so far, but I think not to be
> able to add / to the directories to be indexed, will criple its
> usability (at least for me).

I am not sure how many people would actually attempt to do this. I don't 
expect it to be a regular approach.

--
Regards,
Martyn

Founder and CEO of Lanedo GmbH.