Re: [PEAR-DEV] "Popular Packages"

Hi,

On 29.10.2011 14:23, Alexey Borzov wrote:
> I've looked up a query in pearweb and it looks legit:

In fact the query only initially looks legit...

> SELECT
> packages.name, releases.version, downloads, releasedate,
> downloads/(CEIL((unix_timestamp(NOW()) -
> unix_timestamp(releases.releasedate))/86400)) as releasenotes

...

> a.yearmonth = "' . date('Y-m-01 00:00:00', time()) . '"
> ORDER BY releasenotes DESC';

If one looks more closely, it takes downloads for a current month and then 
divides them by the age of the package, so "* downloads per day" comment is 
bogus for all releases except those done this month.

I traced the problem back to this commit:
https://github.com/pear/pearweb/commit/c22f9f34c5b78a5035a380b40b842f8d334edd3e

The notes there state
> + * Implement *much* better popular packages algorithm: only
> +   count downloads per day for the current month.  This gives
> +   newer packages a fighting chance to be popular :)

I suspect the original intention was to divide by a min(package age in days, 
current day of month), not by a package age.

BTW, if the query is fixed, File_Mogile 0.2.0 mentioned below will reign supreme 
at the "Popular packages" list. It isn't on the first place because its 100K+ 
downloads-per-month are spread thin across its two-year age.

> Also WTF is File_Mogile? Does it really have 100K downloads a month or is this
> creative approach to foreign key constraints?
> http://pear.php.net/package-stats.php?pid=843&cid=9
>