> Yeah, that's exactly what I was doing--I didn't realize I was
> incurring administrative pickle bloat this way.  I'm specifically
> trying to make things faster and smaller, so I'm storing individual
> WordInfo pickles into an anydbm dict (keyed by token).  The result
> is that it's almost 50 times faster to score messages one per run
> our of procmail (.408s vs 18.851s).
This is very worthwhile.
> However, it *does* say all over the place that the goal of this
> project isn't to make the fastest or the smallest implementation, so
> I guess I'll hold off doing any further performance tuning until the
> goal starts to point more in that direction.  .4 seconds is probably
> fast enough for people to use it in their procmailrc, which is what
> I was after.
Maybe.  I batch messages using fetchmail (don't ask why), and adding
.4 seconds per message for a batch of 50 (not untypical) feels like a
real wait to me...
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

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RE: Documentation about built-in RPM macros?
Documentation about built-in RPM macros?
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From rpm-list-admin@freshrpms.net  Fri Aug 16 10:58:23 2002

> From: Ralf Ertzinger [mailto:ralf@camperquake.de]
> Sent: Thursday, August 15, 2002 2:53 PM
> Subject: Re: Documentation about built-in RPM macros?
> Dave Cridland <dave@cridland.net> wrote:
> > > recommends *against* using '%configure' ("We will try to
> > > who accidentally type the leading % but this should not be relied
> > They're just suggesting people use "./configure" instead.
> No, they do not (what would be the use of that, anyway?).
> they will _try_ to eval macros even if the user forgot to pass the
> leading '%', but that this feature should not be relied upon.
Hmm.  1. The quote is not suggesting that people use './configure'.
2. The quote is not saying that rpm will _try_ to eval macros even
if the user forgot to pass the leading '%'.  It is saying the opposite:
rpm will try to support users who "forgot" to _leave off_ the leading
'%'.  That is what the documentation _says_, but rpm does not follow
the documentation.  If you leave off the '%', then rpm will not eval
Anyway, back to my original problem: what about documentation for
the macros '%post', '%postun', and '%files'?  Here's some of what
I found "documented" in the the CHANGES file that 'rpm' includes:
- macro for %files, always include %defattr(), redhat config
- add "rpmlib(ScriptletInterpreterArgs)" to track
I'm unable to find a corresponding description for %postun, but it
appears to work just the same.  The important things to remember are:
1. Don't forget the double-quotes around the -p argument string.  If
you leave them off, you'll get the cryptic error message:
error: line #: Package does not exist: %post -p /sbin/ldconfig -n
2. This only works with RPM 4.0.3 or later.
> On the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me