Looking for speed increases in "make index" and pkg_version for ports

[Stephen Montgomery-Smith]

Ivan Voras wrote:
> Stephen Montgomery-Smith wrote:
>> I have been thinking a lot about looking for speed increases for "make
>> index" and pkg_version and things like that.  So for example, in
>> pkg_version, it calls "make -V PKGNAME" for every installed package. Now
>> "make -V PKGNAME" should be a speedy operation, but the make has to load
>> in and analyze bsd.port.mk, a quite complicated file with about 200,000
>> characters in it, when all it is needing to do is to figure out the
>> value of the variable PKGNAME.
> 
> As long as far-out ideas are being discussed, how about caching such
> information (including dependenices) in a file (I'd call it a database
> but then I'd had to start a holy war :) ) so it's calculated only once,
> preferably on the portsnap / cvsup servers and not at the end-user?

Because the information is not a constant.  For example, the mpg123 port 
changes its PKGNAME as soon as esound is installed.