Julian Elischer wrote: > ok, let me give you some words that come from the wisdom of having done > this for 30 years. > > "Use an SQL DB file for this over my dead body"..
:) I certainly won't be going on a campaign for it, but... > Now having said that, I need to modify it a bit and explain. > > Explanation: > The number of times I've gone into /var/db/pkg to read the files to > figure out what the "fsck" is going on, is very large. > It is also possible to delete files and edit them. > This is very important to me in this imperfect world when the pkg system You can inspect s sqlite database with the provided utility. Unless the database gets corrupted (which it tries to avoid by respecting ACID), I think you can always get more sensible data (and quicker) out of a SQL db then out of a text file. I've seen both the pkg tree (dir of text files) and pkgdb (BDB database) corrupted before, during NORMAL operation (i.e. no power outages & similar disruptive events), so I still vote for a transaction-safe way of doing this. I see it as a choice between annoying many (and I mean a lot of!) users with slow operation and clumsiness vs a little convenience during disaster recovery (e.g. learning basics of SQL). > gets things wrong (oh no, don't tell me that the new pkg system never > gets things wrong.. like including a file in 2 packages). This could be caught by a UNIQUE constraint on a table. > Modification: > Now, I have no objection to a DB file of some sort IF (and only if) > it is somehow rebuildable from a text base which is kept somewhere, That's precisely why the current system is so clumsy - there are at least two places this information is kept, and the "text base" is the limiting factor: slow and not transaction-safe. I don't think it can remain as the primary data store in a modern system. > like the password database is done. but PLEASE, NO SQL in the base system! Maybe the other way around would satisfy you - the ability to rebuild the text db from binary db? Perhaps this is a good time I should mention that I think sqlite would also be good for the password and login databases? :)
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