On Tue, Oct 16, 2007 at 06:33:20PM -0200, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote: > On Tue, 16 Oct 2007, Russ Allbery wrote: > > Michael Biebl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > Today, while browsing through aptitude, I noticed that I had the > > > following bdb versions installed:
> > > version: # of packages depending on it (apt-cache rdepends) > > > libdb4.2 40 > > > libdb4.3 26 > > > libdb4.4 55 > > > libdb4.5 64 > > > libdb4.6 40 > > > Having 5 different versions of one library is just insane imho. What are > > > the reasons, that we still carry around the older versions, like 4.2 and > > > 4.3? Is there software which doesn't build against newer versions, are > > > there other reasons? > > BerkeleyDB 4.2 is still faster and more stable than any subsequent version > > for OpenLDAP, although 4.6 is looking promising. > > I don't have any good explanation for 4.3 through 4.5, though. > I do. We don't ask the cyrus people and openldap people before packaging a > new libdb version. > The ugly truth is that libdb compatibility across minor versions is crap. > You always have to fine-comb the API for changes, because the changes are > not compile-time-detection safe. Then you hit the bugs. > IMHO we should declare a quarantine of a minimum of 6 months on every new > libdb upstream, and only package it *if* openldap (*the* heavy-duty user of > libdb advanced features) and cyrus imap (*the* thousands-of-concurrent- > locks, mmap-happy user of libdb) did not have problems with it. That's equivalent to an indefinite quarantine; according to BDB upstream, OpenLDAP's problems with various versions are a consequence of abusing the interface, not of using "advanced features". I'm not sure why the burden here should be on BDB alone. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
