[Python-Dev] _bsddb too unstable?

[Gregory P. Smith]

On Tue, Jul 13, 2004 at 10:02:21AM -0400, Jim Fulton wrote:
> 
> I just wasted some time chasing down being unable to run the
> Python test suite because the test_anydbm tests were segfaulting.
> Removing the _bsddb module allowed the tests to run without
> segfaulting.
> 
> (FWIW, I'm running on Fedora Core 1, with db4-4.1.25-14)

Where is the sf bugreport?  what python cvs version/date was this,
where did the segfault occur, what stack trace does the coredump show?
test_anydbm.py with _bsddb using 4.1 or 4.2 do not coredump for me,
if theres a bug i'd like to fix it.

> I get the impression that this is a common problem.
> Berkeley DB APIs often change in non-backward compatable
> ways that cause this sort of problem.  Perhaps these APIs
> change too rapidly to allow the _bsddb extension to be included
> in the distribution.  I assume that this is the fault of
> the Berkeley DB libraries, and not the extension, but I don't
> really know. :/

-1

The Sleepycat BerkeleyDB API rarely changes.  The extension is much
more mutable as support for more of the sleepycat apis are added and
enhancements are made to the compatibility interface, i'd expect this
type of bug to be there first.

The recent need to update the compatibility interface to do its own
unlink() rather than calling BerkeleyDB's remove() function is the
-only- time i can recall that a sleepycat change caused any problems.
(and i'm not sure if that was a due to a sleepycat midstream change
because i based my work on adding 4.2 support on a prerelease version
of BerkeleyDB that didn't yet require that change)

greg