Survey: bsddb is definitely broken. Should it be fixed, or deprecated?

[Skip Montanaro]

    Roy> garth at deadlybloodyserious.com (Garth T Kidd) wrote:
    >> Frankly, I'd rather people use dumbdbm (slow) than bsddb
    >> (unreliable), but I'd like to hear what everyone else thinks.

    Roy> I agree.  Fast is good, but working is better.

I'm still unconvinced that there is a problem with the bsddb module.  If
people use the hash file implementation from version 1 of the underlying
Berkeley DB library, they are going to run into problems.  Version 2 and
Version 3 are both available (have been for a long time) and don't suffer
from this problem.

If people want not to use bsddb as an anydbm option, they can execute

    import anydbm
    anydbm._names = ['gdbm', 'dbm', 'dumbdbm']

or some other combination of suitable module names.  Messing with that in
the core is not really a very good option, since shuffling that list will
cause existing code to break (won't be able to open existing databases).
You have to know what the implications are of changing anydbm._names.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com - http://www.mojam.com/)
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