Of course they do.
The problem here is that a not-insignificant number of users who choose BDB
as their Subversion back-end have serious problems with it.
Given that many people use it successfully, there are probably some criteria
that define whether a given user will have trouble with it. It could be
related to repository size/count, access method (http, https, svn, file),
usage statistics, operating system, or any number of other conditions.
I get the impression that the Subversion developers have no idea what those
criteria are. I have no idea how much effort has been expended trying to
determine the criteria, although I'm sure it's a significant amount.
If someone is lucky enough to have a usage pattern and system configuration
which do not cause trouble with BDB, they they are welcome to use the faster
and "higher-tech" BDB back-end to Subversion. I don't think it's necessary
to remove it as an option.
However, anyone who has the sort of trouble described by Dave Camp should
very seriously consider switching to FSFS, since there seem to be no reports
of similar issues with that implementation. I think it was the right
decision to make FSFS the default, therefore shielding all new users from
the problem. My experience with FSFS-based repositories has not revealed
any performance issues worth worrying about, and if, from a black-box point
of view, FSFS and BDB behave identically (i.e., the features available in
Subversion don't change with respect to which back-end you use), I see no
reason NOT to use FSFS.
From that standpoint, it would not be unreasonable to deprecate the BDB
option and remove it sometime in the future.
-Jake
-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Collins-Sussman [mailto:sussman@collab.net]
Sent: Friday, July 01, 2005 2:42 PM
To: Craig A. Vanderborgh
Cc: users@subversion.tigris.org
Subject: Re: I lost 7 bdb repositories yesterday!
On Jul 1, 2005, at 12:40 PM, Craig A. Vanderborgh wrote:
> The BDB implementation should either be repaired, or it should be
> abandoned if it can't be. As it stands right now, it's unusable.
> And there are a lot of devoted users out there who can attest to that.
And what about all of the thousands of people who have been using BDB
for years, and never had a single crash or problem, ever? Do they
get to attest as well?
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Received on Fri Jul 1 21:46:22 2005