[Python-Dev] bsddb and sqlite (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Mon Sep 8 01:01:49 CEST 2008

On Sun, Sep 7, 2008 at 3:43 PM, Steve Holden <steve at holdenweb.com> wrote:

Oleg Broytmann wrote:

On Sun, Sep 07, 2008 at 11:34:37AM -0700, Gregory P. Smith wrote:

You could probably have built the bsddb185 module and loaded your data from that and rewritten it using the new bsddb module.

I built bsddb185, loaded old data, exported it to... I don't remember now, but I clearly remember I stopped using bsddb.

The lesson for python: when that happens lets write the code to make the transition between formats trivial. For me the lesson is different - do not include modules in the stdlib that relies on unstable 3rd party libraries. I consider bsddb unstable. sqlite is more stable, but PySQLite... there are many minor releases between Python releases; my humble opinion is it'd be better to have one external PySQLite module than two (PySQLite and sqlite3). Unfortunately this advice should have been taken several years ago. The fact is that there are almost certainly Python users who rely on the presence of the bsddb module for production work, and simply removing it without deprecation is bound to upset those users.

Those users would first have to port their code to Python 3.0. That task is a lot larger than dealing with a separate download of bsddb. It is not being removed from 2.6.

I'm particularly concerned that it appears that normal procedures have been circumvented to enable its removal from 3.0. Since we have at least one developer committed to ongoing support that seems both harsh and unnecessary.

3.0 breaks a lot of things. Most of the library reorg may have been discussed more than this particular removal, but that doesn't mean that changes won't come as a surprise for most users. In this case, a completely compatible module is available as a 3rd party download. That's a lot less sever than the complete abandonment than the fat of many other modules. It's just a matter of source code packaging. Vendors can completely remove the difference in their packaging of the binaries.

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

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list