It never fails (bsddb retirement in 2.3)

[Steve Holden]

"Nick Vargish" <nav at adams.patriot.net> wrote in message
news:yyywuh9jq2t.fsf at adams.patriot.net...
> "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> writes:
>
> > That looks like bsddb 1.85, indeed, except that it is perhaps
> > DEC/Compaq/HP modified.
>
> DEC rarely touched anything without adding their own special... flavor
> to it.
>
Yup.

> > Ok. If you want bsddb185 to be built by default with setup.py, please
> > submit a patch to SF. That patch should
>   [ .. ]
> > If you can't/don't want to produce such a patch, you might want to find
> > somebody else who does.
>
> I'm going to save your message and see if time allows me to follow
> through. I'm also going to try Skip's suggestion of modifying
> Setup/Modules and site.py in combination to get the behavior I had in
> 2.2.2.
>
Skip's they guy you'll get the best information frmo, as he's been hoeing
this lonely furrow for some time now.

> There's been an implication in a couple of messages I've received that
> I'm trying to hold the Python community back, or prevent it from
> moving forward with a better library.
>
> That's not the case at all. I don't think it's unreasonable of me to
> be perturbed that behavior that I relied upon in one version has
> changed, especially since one of the selling points of Python is that
> it traditionally is very backwards compatible.
>
Neither do I, and you're entitled to voice ytour concerns.

> When "import bsddb" gives a new set of features and requires a
> different library from the one that a previous version used quite
> happily, I consider that not being backwards compatible. Discovering
> these issues is part of a beta test, is it not?
>
Yes.

> Wouldn't it make sense, to some degree, to require the _new_
> functionality use a new module name, instead of changing the behavior
> of an existing one?
>
It might, but those issues might be a bit hard to revisit now.

> I'm trying very hard to get Python accepted where I work. Anything
> that makes installing it more complicated is going to make it harder
> to get it accepted. Overt breakage of backwards compatibility is going
> to be even wose. Due to the nature of the work environment, I ma
> not have root access on the systems, and I will have to write up
> instructions for installing the software. With that in mind, would I
> be better off using a different library, or abandoning this avenue for
> improving the performance of the programs in question?
>
> Well, thanks to anyone who's bothered to read the rambling post that
> this message has become...
>

Yet another advantage of Python you can point out to your colleagues: people
will read your rambling posts, and try to help you with your compatibility
issues.

regards
--
Steve Holden                                  http://www.holdenweb.com/
Python Web Programming                 http://pydish.holdenweb.com/pwp/