Bug 438625

I bet your second one runs from cache
you should try with  echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches    in between

The difference on my system is negligible. 0.5-1 s

That being said I also find -qa to be too slow, for no reason that I can imagine.

Caching brings the second run of the first command to between 13.5 and 14.5 
seconds. The second is still approaching ten times faster. Maybe you have 
fewer packages installed?

[root@pikachu ~]# time rpm -qa --define '_vsflags_query 0xf0000' >/dev/null

real    0m17.078s
user    0m12.014s
sys     0m1.062s
[root@pikachu ~]# time rpm -qa --define '_vsflags_query 0xf0000' >/dev/null

real    0m13.636s
user    0m11.917s
sys     0m0.583s
[root@pikachu ~]# time rpm -qa --define '_vsflags_query 0xf0000' >/dev/null

real    0m14.454s
user    0m12.028s
sys     0m0.460s
[root@pikachu ~]# time rpm -qa --define '_vsflags_query 0xf0f00' >/dev/null

real    0m1.513s
user    0m0.972s
sys     0m0.400s
[root@pikachu ~]# time rpm -qa --define '_vsflags_query 0xf0f00' >/dev/null

real    0m1.506s
user    0m0.973s
sys     0m0.399s
[root@pikachu ~]# time rpm -qa --define '_vsflags_query 0xf0f00' >/dev/null

real    0m1.638s
user    0m1.001s
sys     0m0.408s
[root@pikachu ~]# echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches 
[root@pikachu ~]# time rpm -qa --define '_vsflags_query 0xf0f00' >/dev/null

real    0m6.141s
user    0m1.062s
sys     0m0.781s
[root@pikachu ~]# time rpm -qa --define '_vsflags_query 0xf0f00' >/dev/null

real    0m1.451s
user    0m0.988s
sys     0m0.341s

All that's been proven is that with new flags, from cold cache, is twice as 
fast as old flags, even with warm cache :o)

I can reporoduce the ~50% speeup on two fc8 systems i386 and x86_64 , unable to
reproduce on two rawhide systems i386 and x86_64

Yes, disabling signature checks speeds up db queries a lot. But changing
_vsflags_query disables signature checks on all types of queries, including
those of non-installed, untrusted packages which is not so good...

#       0x00f00 (_RPMVSF_NOHEADER)     --nohdrchk      if set, don't check rpmdb
headers

Should only affect the reads from the database. Although I could be wrong, I'm
only looking at the comments in /usr/lib/rpm/macros.

Adding FutureFeature keyword to RFE's.

*** Bug 501103 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

This is *purely* a configuration issue.

You can disable whether rpm --query checks signatures (or not)
by configuring a macro. No one "default" will ever satisfy everyone.

The macro can be set persistently, on a per-user, per-system, per-vendor basis.
See details in /usr/lib/rpm/macros.

And the issue is not speed. Noone has ever claimed that disabling signature/digest checking
isn't faster. Cold cache, warm cache, It Really Doesn't Matter.

Hint: Signatures/digests are not checked for performance reasons.

Re: comment #6: Better read your @rpm.org code. vsflags can be disabled for --query
without affecting any other behavior.

This package has changed ownership in the Fedora Package Database.  Reassigning to the new owner of this component.

This package has changed ownership in the Fedora Package Database.  Reassigning to the new owner of this component.

Upstream patch adds macro _vsflags_query_rpmdb. If it is defined then it is used for queries when "-p" is not set on commandline. If it is not defined then macro _vsflags_query is used. For queries with "-p" on commadline macro _vsflags_query is always used. Macro _vsflags_query_rpmdb is set to 0xf0f00 (no checking) by default.

diff --git a/lib/query.c b/lib/query.c
index 739a0de..febb7b9 100644
--- a/lib/query.c
+++ b/lib/query.c
@@ -594,7 +594,7 @@ int rpmcliQuery(rpmts ts, QVA_t qva, char * const * argv)
        qva->qva_queryFormat = fmt;
     }
 
-    if (!(qva->qva_source & RPMQV_RPM) &&
+    if (!(qva->qva_source == RPMQV_RPM) &&
        rpmExpandNumeric("%{?_vsflags_query_rpmdb:1}")) {
 
        vsflags = rpmExpandNumeric("%{?_vsflags_query_rpmdb}");

(otherwise fails when doing -qa, as RPMQV_ALL == 2, so (qva->qva_source & 3) is non-zero).

Worth re-opening? :)