Re: [Evolution-hackers] db3 and db4

[JP Rosevear <jpr ximian com>]

On Wed, 2003-11-19 at 05:23, Frederic Crozat wrote:
> Le mar 18/11/2003 à 22:33, JP Rosevear a écrit :
> > In order to make evolution and evolution-data-server easier to build, we
> > are trying to cut out the external db3 dependency on a specific
> > version.  So, I'm planning to import db3 into the tree.  However, Dan
> > pointed out that we might want to import the latest db4 so that distros
> > and platforms (for instance netbsd, fink do right now, suse did at one
> > point) that didn't do this are covered.
> 
> Hmm, as a distro packager, I really don't like seeing whole bunch of
> external code being integrated that way in modules.
> 
> Why ?
> Because it makes packages (and fixes) much more harder to fix in case
> something needs to be fix in the external code. 
> 
> The best example is zlib which was copied in a LOT of places (3 times in
> kernel, dozen of time in various apps) and when the first security bug
> was raised in zlib, it tooks about 6 months to get the situation cleaned
> correctly. Moreover, since it was statically link with those programs,
> doing the security fix was really a pain.
> 
> Dynamic linking is really a great think when maintaining distro (or for
> ports to new arch, etc..). So I would really prefer you don't come with
> your own copy of db4 :(
> 
> Of course, if db4 file format is known to not change during the entire
> 4.x branch, it is not really a problem :)

This is the real reasons we need to import it - incompatible db
formats.  As far as we could tell the DB people change formats between
minor versions (at least they did for the 3.x series) and then don't
version the libraries properly so its hard to account for binary
compatability.  If we dynamic linked it means it might be impossible to
move you .evolution dir to another machine if that machine's evo was
linked to an older DB.  I don't want various source trees proliferating
either, but I don't see a better solution at this point.

-JP
-- 
JP Rosevear <jpr ximian com>
Ximian, Inc.