[Reportbug-maint] Bug#564112: Checking status of source packages with many binaries takes ~forever

[Sandro Tosi]

Hello Ben,
thanks for your bug report.

On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 20:05, Ben Hutchings <ben at decadent.org.uk> wrote:
> 8715  18:36:59 --- SIGCHLD (Child exited) @ 0 (0) ---
> [...]
> 9696  18:57:09 execve("/bin/sh", ["sh", "-c", "{ apt-cache show 'linux-image-2."...], [/* 46 vars */]) = 0

Holy crap, 20 minutes?! are you sure there's nothing wrong on your
system? For example I tried to replicate here and it takes just few
seconds:

Using 'Sandro Tosi <morph at debian.org>' as your from address.
Getting status for linux-2.6...
Process 5875 attached
[pid  5875] 21:52:56 execve("/bin/sh", ["sh", "-c", "{ COLUMNS=79 dpkg
--status  'lin"...], [/* 48 vars */]) = 0
...
[pid  6417] 21:53:02 execve("/usr/bin/apt-cache", ["apt-cache",
"show", ""], [/* 47 vars */]) = 0
Process 6416 resumed
Process 6417 detached
[pid  6416] 21:53:02 --- SIGCHLD (Child exited) @ 0 (0) ---
Process 6416 detached
21:53:02 --- SIGCHLD (Child exited) @ 0 (0) ---
Which of the following packages is the bug in?

> This can probably be fixed by passing multiple package names to
> apt-cache once.  You should probably filter out those empty package
> names too.

I agree we can optimize a bit the code (but there's probably a reason
is done one-by-one) but that still quite weird that delay! is it
possible that there are several packages pointing to linux-2.6 (that
won't surprise me, you're one of the maints :) ) and so it slows damn
down the performance? does it happen only on linux-2.6 or also on
other packages?

Cheers,
-- 
Sandro Tosi (aka morph, morpheus, matrixhasu)
My website: http://matrixhasu.altervista.org/
Me at Debian: http://wiki.debian.org/SandroTosi