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Whohas – Command-line utility for cross-distro, cross-repository package search

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Re: Whohas – Command-line utility for cross-distro, cross-repository package search

#11

Post by embedding-shape »

bblb wrote: post #10

This kind of busy work should suit an AI agent: Go and find me all the repolists and package/software metadata for any distro and OS ever released. Write the results to a local SQLite. Incrementally update, but don't hammer the sources to death. Provide a web UI and CLI.

Or you know, you could do that with a ~100 long script. You don't have to use LLMs for everything, especially when you're not dealing with freeform text at all, use data types and data structures, we've created the concepts for a reason.

Re: Whohas – Command-line utility for cross-distro, cross-repository package search

#13

Post by hparadiz »

I've been working on a GUI task manager for Linux and I've been wanting to put a "Funding" or ownership meta data next to the process or process group in the view so people can know where the upstream code lives, how to support the project, and what organizational unit "owns" that process.

So I actually vibe coded a script that does this against a sqlite db I've been considering to bundle with my task manager so it can know this stuff on the fly.

But yea this is a key missing component in Linux user space. Windows let's you encode organizational stuff into an exe but on Linux binaries don't really have that.

Re: Whohas – Command-line utility for cross-distro, cross-repository package search

#14

Post by pimlottc »

Intralexical wrote: post #9
chb wrote: post #3

First I saw that it's written in Perl. Then I realized that the last release was 11 years ago and that the repository domains are hardcoded in the one-file script.

Does it still work, though? Where else would you put the repository domains?

In about a hundred or so separate microservices, of course…

Re: Whohas – Command-line utility for cross-distro, cross-repository package search

#17

Post by bblb »

embedding-shape wrote: post #11
bblb wrote: post #10

This kind of busy work should suit an AI agent: Go and find me all the repolists and package/software metadata for any distro and OS ever released. Write the results to a local SQLite. Incrementally update, but don't hammer the sources to death. Provide a web UI and CLI.

Or you know, you could do that with a ~100 long script. You don't have to use LLMs for everything, especially when you're not dealing with freeform text at all, use data types and data structures, we've created the concepts for a reason.

Sure. But then I would have to use my brain to actually write code. I thought we were past that already. Also, if it's an agent that keeps scouring the net autonomously for more distros, then I wouldn't have to update the sources manually on my 100 line script.

Re: Whohas – Command-line utility for cross-distro, cross-repository package search

#18

Post by halJordan »

Intralexical wrote: post #9
chb wrote: post #3

First I saw that it's written in Perl. Then I realized that the last release was 11 years ago and that the repository domains are hardcoded in the one-file script.

Does it still work, though? Where else would you put the repository domains?

Are you asking if this tool can find something on ubuntu 26.04 when the urls it has were hardcoded 11 years ago?

Re: Whohas – Command-line utility for cross-distro, cross-repository package search

#20

Post by c-hendricks »

halJordan wrote: post #18
Intralexical wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it still work, though? Where else would you put the repository domains?

Are you asking if this tool can find something on ubuntu 26.04 when the urls it has were hardcoded 11 years ago?

The URL to search for packages in Ubuntu for example hasn't changed to my knowledge. Are you assuming it's only looking for packages in releases that were current at the time?
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