Frontend for other indexers, such as for KDE's baloo

[miguelmartin75]

Apologies if this is a bit naive.

From my understanding:

1. albert runs in a single process
2. a background thread in this process runs a file indexer (either prefix or fuzzy search)

Is that correct? My first question with this design, is why not have the 'background' thread/indexer in a separate process running as a daemon, similar to that of baloo (krunner acts as a frontend for baloo).

My second question, is there any support for 3rd party indexers, such as KDE's baloo? i.e. use albert purely as a frontend for baloo. If not, I assume the best way to go about this would be to implement it through a plugin.

I'm just curious, as I'm not sure how the current indexer compares to alternatives in terms of performance and memory (memory being the index file on disk, if albert's indexer even stores such a file). Running albert on KDE is a bit annoying, since I have to disable krunner and baloo if I don't want unused consumption of my CPU/disk space.

[ManuelSchneid3r]

Is that correct?

yes

is why not have the 'background' thread/indexer…

Simply missing manpower in this project. I am actually the only one working on the sophisticated things (core, C++ extensions). Unfortunately I have zero time atm since I have to finish my studies that are taking too long now. There is a vivid community around the python extensions though.

is there any support for 3rd party indexers, such as KDE's baloo?

not atm

I assume the best way to go about this would be to implement it through a plugin.

yes, there is also Xapian which would be cool to adapt.

if albert's indexer even stores such a file

yes it does, but rather for instant access on restart. the datastructure is in-memory for blazing fast lookup.

[ManuelSchneid3r]

Since one of the core ideas I started albert was to get independent of the desktop environments this issue will never get priority (for me). If you want this feature you have to implement it. I really like the idea. It basically reduces the load, some sort of specialization for dedicated DEs. Thats fine, however I am more than busy with the generic approach (files ext). I would appreciate any Pull Requests to make albert more satifying for users though.

[ManuelSchneid3r]

Added to https://github.com/albertlauncher/albert/wiki/Extension-requests