Right now emerge --search builds a list of search results, then prints all results at the end. This appears slow to users as it "stalls" while generating the results, then spews them at the end. Printing each result as it is found should have much better interactivity and will appear faster even when it takes the same amount of time
I would like to develop a streaming API for the package description index file (see bug #525718). My plan is to search index file streams from all repos simultaneously, and to group together results for the same ${CATEGORY}/${PN} across all repositories.
My latest patch series from bug #525718 includes support for incremental display of search results: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.portage.devel/4648/focus=4717 I'm maintaining this patch series in the following branch: https://github.com/zmedico/portage/tree/bug_525718_stream
I've split out a patch to fix this bug from the series for bug 525718. It's in this branch: https://github.com/zmedico/portage/tree/bug_412471 I've posted it for review here: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.portage.devel/4749
This is in the master branch now: https://github.com/gentoo/portage/commit/4938b8a8a72e719b394a5c5b0c5030c160091d57
Released in portage-2.2.16.