Re: libdb4.* madness in unstable
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 <biebl@debian.org> 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.
vorlon@debian.org http://www.debian.org/
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