Re: [gentoo-dev] db questions

["Robin H. Johnson" <robbat2@gentoo.org>]

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On Sun, Oct 19, 2003 at 11:51:33PM +0000, C. Brewer wrote:
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> I recently noticed I have 5 versions of db installed now (~x86), and
> my question is this: since qpkg is lying to me and says I need them
> all and the ebuilds say different, what versions are actually required
> now, and is there any chance that we'll get to just one in the
> future?:)

It's highly unlikely that we will get the point where we will need only
one.

I don't know where you get five versions however, this is what most
machines will end up with over time (these are also the 4 slots):
sys-libs/db-1*
sys-libs/db-3*
sys-libs/db-4.0*
sys-libs/db-4.1*

The reasoning behind this is repeated API changes have lead programs to
specificly link against some version, or come up with fancy macros
(which break often) to try and work with lots of them.

The major problem with the API changes is changes in the order and
number of parameters of some function calls.

There are programs in portage that specificly look for all of
those slotted variants.

-- 
Robin Hugh Johnson
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