Improvements to Debian Search and the Search Interface

by Aarsh Shah for Debian Project

The project is about improving Debian's search results and search interface by implementing state of the art and parameter free DFR weighting schemes in Xapian which are known to outperform the current weighting schemes available under Xapian and then deploying them in Debian search. Also, query expansion feature will also be implemented in Debian search and it will be greatly improved by implementing novel query expansion schemes in Xapian which are not currently implemented. Moreover, spelling suggestions feature and resistance to keyword spamming will also be implemented in Debian search which will greatly improve the search experience for Debian users. As an optional project, the popularity of a page will be estimated by various metrics which will then be used to add to the weight of a of a page thereby making the search results more relevant and dynamic.