Bug#394648: [Pkg-db-devel] Bug#394648: Please explain POSIX thread issue?

[Clint Adams]

> I can't find any references to the POSIX thread issue in 
> Oracle/Sleepycat's documentation.  Could you please elaborate a bit, or 
> consider including db4.5 without necessarily rebuilding other 
> applications to link against it.  As you know, bdb has a long history of 
> requiring a few years for each version to mature / get fully patched up. 

In db4.2, db4.3, and db4.4, we have disabled POSIX mutexes in favor of
platform-specific assembly-language fast mutexes.  This allows BDB to
be used on Linux kernels older than 2.6, which is a release requirement
for etch.  This way, a user can do a full upgrade from sarge to etch
and everything will continue functioning even though the kernel may not
support thread-local storage.

For a number of reasons, db4.5 has not been patched in such a fashion.
If we were to target db4.5 for etch, we would need to forward-port the
mutexes patch or, as you hint, prevent any packages from linking
against it.  I suspect that the latter course of action would be a
logistical nightmare.

If we continue to do nothing on this matter, you can expect a db4.5
backport on backports.org shortly after the release.

If you think additional action is warranted, feel free to explain.