Re: global full-text search for NetBSD

[Jukka Ruohonen <jruohonen%iki.fi@localhost>]

On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 01:18:52PM -0600, David Young wrote:
> If you agree that the core system ought to be useful, coherent,
> seamlessly expandable, and scalable, then in this day of 500-gigabyte
> - 1-terabyte HDDs, global full-text search is an essential part of an
> operating system core, much as a hierarchical filesystem was adequate
> (and feasible) for organizing a 10-megabyte HDD back in 1985.

Actually, while I agree with the above, I had two different points in mind.
First, I think you might underestimate the resources required for something
like this (i.e. NetBSD should collaborate with existing projects). 

Secondly, the "core" operating system (i.e. NetBSD as we now understand it)
is quite barebone, lacking sufficient support to pull something like this
through.  You need good libraries to parse PDF files, you need libraries to
sort out MP3s, you need integrated e-mail clients, ...  -- you get the
picture. Thus, a much better "platform" is the desktop system running on
top of the "core" operating system.

- Jukka.