Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 21:43:12 -0400 (EDT) From: Keith Bostic <bostic@sleepycat.com> To: mi@aldan.algebra.com Cc: current@FreeBSD.org, msmith@FreeBSD.org, wes@softweyr.com Subject: Re: picking a DB (Re: nvi maintainer?) Message-ID: <200107100143.f6A1hCY28552@abyssinian.sleepycat.com>
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>>> Well, can someone comment on the useability of gdbm? I know, it has >>> dbm and ndbm compatibility "mode" and a less restrictive license. >>> Should we switch over to it? >> >> This isn't necessary. The *current* FreeBSD libc Berkeley DB sources >> are completely safe -- they're under a UC Regents copyright notice. > > Well, but there are programming bugs in it, as was pointed out in this > thread. Unless FreeBSD wants to maintain its own db, we need to select > someone else's. DB3 -- despite its technical merits -- does not fit > because of restrictive licensing. gdbm's license is not ideal, but > acceptable -- so I'm inquiring about its technical merits... Technically gdbm is fine. I doubt you'll be able to displace Berkeley DB, though; gdbm is less buggy, but doesn't offer many of the features, nor does it offer equivalent performance. > I'd welcome your comments in particular, since you are an expert in the > field and there is not going to be a conflict of interest. Actually, I'm pretty biased. :-) I'd like to see Berkeley DB 1.85 go away for a lot of reasons -- I don't much care what it's replaced with. >> This discussion is only regarding the possibility of making the >> Berkeley DB 3.X functionality available to the FreeBSD community and >> its customers. > > Well, it started out discussing the next release of nvi and promptly > concluded, that it would require upgrading dbm. So, now the issue is -- > which db to pick: the currently used (buggy), the DB3 (too restrictive a > license, IMO), gdbm, or something else (Net or OpenBSD's?). Nvi won't require upgrading the library's dbm support. Berkeley DB 3.X supports inclusion of multiple DB versions in a single application. Nvi's simple solution is to include a copy of DB in the nvi distribution. Regards, --keith =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Keith Bostic Sleepycat Software Inc. bostic@sleepycat.com 118 Tower Rd. +1-781-259-3139 Lincoln, MA 01773 http://www.sleepycat.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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