[Pkg-bitcoin-devel] Bug#731953: Bug#731953: bitcoin: Package is allowed to build with too-new libdb, resulting in non-portability of wallets

[Micha Bailey]

The problem is not easily worked around by importing/exporting private
keys, as there will potentially be many different keys that need to be
exported and reimported, some of which aren't even exposed to the user due
to the mechanics of change addresses and the keypool. Additionally, users
expect to be able to move from one platform to another.
Re: your comment about backing up wallet.dat, backups of the wallet are
exactly where this problem is the worst, because a backup is expected to
work on any system. Users of the package *need* to know that a backup of
their wallet.dat from a Debian/Ubuntu system using the distro's repository
cannot be expected to be usable on the majority of systems that run Bitcoin.


On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 6:23 PM, Scott Howard <showard314 at gmail.com> wrote:

> severity 731952 wishlist
> tags 731952 wontfix
> thanks
>
> > In the bitcoin_0.8.6-1.dsc file, the "Build-Depends:" section includes
> the entry "libdb++-dev | libdb4.8++-dev". This results in the package
> potentially being built with BDB version 5.1. The recommended version, and
> the one that the upstream release binaries for all platforms (including
> Windows, OS X, and Linux) are built with, is 4.8. BDB is used in the
> Bitcoin software for the bitcoin wallet. BDB 5.1 databases are not
> backwards-compatible with BDB 4.8. The result of this is any wallet.dat
> files that are created by, or even opened with, a Bitcoin binary compiled
> with BDB 5.1, that wallet will become incompatible with most other bitcoin
> binaries out there.
>
> This text is well written and should be added to README.Debian and a
> summary of this statement added to the package description.
>
> Debian removed libdb4.8, so this is unfixable. The severity is minor
> since this only shows up when you try to mix upstream and Debian
> binaries. Additionally, you can work around it by importing/exporting
> private keys to and from wallets of any version. You can open
> wallet.dat with the client that created/modified it in order to export
> keys.
>
> Backing up wallet.dat is very important for this and many other reasons.
>
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