[Python-Dev] Python 3.0.1

[Guido van Rossum]

On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 3:27 PM, Raymond Hettinger <python at rcn.com> wrote:
> To get the ball rolling, I have a candidate for discussion.
>
> Very late in the 3.0 process (after feature freeze), the bsddb code was
> ripped out (good riddance).  This had the unfortunate side-effect of
> crippling shelves which now fall back to using dumbdbm.
>
> I'm somewhat working on an alternate dbm based on sqlite3:
>   http://code.activestate.com/recipes/576638/
> It is a pure python module and probably will not be used directly, but shelves
> will see an immediate benefit (especially for large shelves) in terms of speed
> and space.
>
> On the one hand, it is an API change or new feature because people can
> (if they choose) access the dbm directly.  OTOH, it is basically a
> performance fix for shelves whose API won't change at all.  The part that is visible
> and incompatible is that 3.0.1 shelves won't be readable by 3.0.0.

That is too much for 3.0.1. It could affect external file formats
which strikes me as a bad idea.

Sounds like a good candidate for 3.1, which we should be expecting in
4-6 months I hope. Also you could try find shelve users (are there
any?) and recommend they install this as a 3rd party package, with the
expectation it'll be built into 3.1.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)