snap list/find output

[John Lenton]

I think we can do better than your proposal, but it's easier to
implement than what I had in mind, and I'm running out of both time to
do this and energy to argue the point. Going with yours as a first
pass.

On 25 May 2016 at 14:59, Gustavo Niemeyer
<gustavo.niemeyer at canonical.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, May 25, 2016 at 5:43 AM, John Lenton <john.lenton at canonical.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> With your suggestion for "snap find" output, even with the paltry
>> packages we have today, you already have just three characters left
>> before the 80th column for summary, and a third of that width is used
>> up for "version". That seems wrong to me, and it's only going to get
>> worse as "Notes" gets used.
>
>
> The length of those fields does not depend on the number of packages we
> have. We can have just a few, and be close to the maximum expected width.
> And unfiltered find is likely to get very busy indeed, because you'll always
> be hitting the worst possible width available for all fields. Eventually we
> should likely prevent that command from running altogether.
>
> Looking at my 16.04 installation for more relevant data, the max length for
> versions is 52, but the average is 12 and the median is 7. The output of
> unfiltered dpkg -l starts the summary at column 129, despite displaying only
> the name, version, arch, and summary.
>
> I don't think we can win if the goal is having meaningful output for
> everything under 80 columns.
>
>
> gustavo @ http://niemeyer.net