Package search

[matteodelabre]

In its current form, our package listing page (live here: https://toltec-dev.org/stable, https://toltec-dev.org/testing, generated from this template) isn’t well suited to users looking for a specific package. Using Ctrl-F on that page will only match packages on their name and description, but another common use case is to be looking for a specific file without knowing the name of the package that provides it (perhaps most commonly, the name of a provided binary/script).

Proposal: Using an offline-generated index, provide an listing page on which one can search for packages based on the following criteria: name, description, and provided files. This search interface could include packages from Entware (thereby solving toltec-dev/web#2).

This new listing page could combine both https://toltec-dev.org/stable and https://toltec-dev.org/testing, with stable shown by default and a switch to select which branch to show.

To the extent possible, I’d rather make this search work client-side to avoid increasing the server load and operating costs. If the index is not too big, we can make the client download it and then query it in the browser. If the index is too large, we may consider using https://github.com/phiresky/sql.js-httpvfs.

[matteodelabre]

Here’s a mockup of what the search page could look like:

[matteodelabre]

Improved design with a denser display of search results. Clicking the name of a package could lead to a new page with more details that are (arguably) not immediately relevant on the search page but could be useful in some cases (complete list of files, full description, section, maintainer, …).

[matteodelabre]

Feature request: list packages from a category (e.g. by typing category:launcher in the search bar) & provide ability to pre-fill search bar from URL. See toltec-dev/toltec#460.