Berkeley DB in Evolution Data Server
------- Comment #13 from Devashish Sharma 2006-04-24 11:07 UTC ------- Patch committed to cvs head.
Always a good thing to see, and especially so when it's this patch. The patch allows Evolution Data Server to be built with a system install of Berkeley DB, instead of always with the copy shipped in EDS. This is designed for systems where the version of Berkeley DB won't change over time, such as embedded systems or Debian-derived distributions (which allows multiple versions of libdb to be installed). There are several reasons for doing this:
- Security: bug fixes and security updates don't need to replicated. If there is a security fix in Berkeley DB it doesn't need be back-ported and applied to the copied code in EDS.
- Performance: EDS ships with Berkeley DB 4.1, but Berkeley DB 4.3 works, and is faster.
- Memory Usage: this is the fun one. In a standard EDS build, both the "file" addressbook backend and libedataserver link to Berkeley DB. However, as the library is an embedded copy and isn't installed, it is statically linked. Yes, a 600Kb library is statically linked into EDS twice.
As you can imagine, I'm glad this patch has finally landed upstream!
NP: Protection, Massive Attack
