All, Devs,
I was curious about the frequency that packages in extra and core are
installed by Arch users. Is that metadata captured anywhere and is there any
way a user can query it?
What sparked this curiosity is that I follow the package feeds closely
checking for version changes I may have to deal with on a production box. In
doing so I learn about many packages I've never heard of before. That posed
the question of how frequently all packages are installed by Arch users.
Package use, popularity, whatever you want to call it can provide a
reasonable metric when comparing between two packages that provide the same
feature in determining which to investigate first or install. It would also
give a metric of the impact of a developer retiring or orphaning packages.
Does any install frequency data such as that exist for packages in extra
and core? Or could it be garnered by whatever data is captured from the mirror
system?
--
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
