[Libosinfo] RFC: Splitting off database into separate package

[Yang Yu]

I am kinda late to the party.

This is indeed a much needed feature. Many distros have libosinfo
package 6 mon+ old (missing recent OS releases).

- Is XML the format we want to use long term ?
I agree with switching to json if the performance gain is significant.
Not a high priority if performance isn't going to be a concern in
short term.
If xml support does not get discontinued, some well defined precedence
to handle conflicts (in case a copy of xml database and a copy of json
database are present at the same time) seems necessary.

- Do we need to mark a database schema version in some manner ?
adding a hash associated with the version number to remind people if
the database has been modified since released?
adding a flag to prevent the database from getting overwritten by
updates if the user wants to keep the modified version?

- Should we restructure the database ?
1 entity per file instead of a huge file with everything makes sense.
Easier to maintain. I agree with your approach in [PATCH 00/39] Split
up database XML files
https://www.redhat.com/archives/libosinfo/2015-September/msg00043.html

- How do we provide notifications when updates are available
Using DNS TXT record for update check is a brilliant idea. While
having a separate package for database updates, I would like to see a
method to update the database on demand outside the distro's package
management (too much admin work and taking too long to publish).  It
can be as easy as a script to operate in diff/overwrite mode. The
files can be hosted on github or with cloudflare cdn so libosinfo.org
won't get hammered too much.


I tried to replace everything in /usr/share/libosinfo/db with the
/data (except /data/schemas) from git and /usr/share/libosinfo/schemas
with data/schemas. It did not work. Is there any change that prevents
the current database from working on 0.2.11?

libosinfo.x86_64                 0.2.11-4.el7            @anaconda/7.1

$ osinfo-query os
 Short ID             | Name
    | Version  | ID
----------------------+----------------------------------------------------+----------+-----------------------------------------


Yang