Removing (or trying to) BerkeleyDB from Fedora

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Thu, Jan 08, 2015 at 10:10:03AM -0500, David Cantrell wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 08, 2015 at 09:32:04AM -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 9:18 AM, Chris Adams <linux at cmadams.net> wrote:
> > > Once upon a time, Jan Staněk <jstanek at redhat.com> said:
> > >> The topic of BerkeleyDB v6 in Fedora was already discussed at this list
> > >> [1], and it turned out that peaceful cooperation of multiple libdb
> > >> versions in system is very problematic. As some packages cannot use
> > >> newer versions, we are basically stuck with v5 - unless we get rid of it
> > >> altogether or find another solution.
> > >
> > > Why does v6 having an incompatible license mean we should get rid of v5?
> > > BerkeleyDB is widely used because it meets a need, and v5 meets that
> > > need in a license-compatible way for many programs.  What benefit is
> > > there in trying to remove it?
> > 
> > In addition to Chris' question, shouldn't this effort be driven
> > upstream first?  I'm concerned that removing BerkeleyDB from these
> > packages within Fedora will become a series of ever-lasting
> > micro-forks.  Also, is there a recommended replacement for libdb?
> 
> It's not a drop-in replacement, but I have seen sqlite be a viable option
> for projects wanting some database library and wanting a stable API.  Many
> upstream projects that can use berkdb have grown sqlite support as an
> option.

Interesting data point: libguestfs uses libdb to read RPM databases.
Even if RPM were to switch to sqlite (or we were to switch to librpm),
we would still require libdb forever in order to be able to read
databases from older guests.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
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