Re: [Monotone-devel] Monotone upgrade policy for the SQLite copy?

[Markus Schiltknecht]

Hi,

Ralf S. Engelschall wrote:
> While looking at compile-time warnings of Monotone, I've just stumpled
> over the fact that we are still using SQLite 3.4.2 in Monotone while at
> sqlite.org we already have SQLite 3.5.7 released recently. My simple
> question is: what is the "official" Monotone upgrade policy with respect
> to the embedded copy of SQLite?

I guess simply because noone has taken care, recently. Matthew did the 
last update to 3.4.2 on 2007-08-14.

Please also note, that 3.4.2 is the latest 3.4 release and 3.5.0 
features some incompatibilities with older versions, see:
http://www.sqlite.org/34to35.html

> Who takes care of the SQLite upgrades for Monotone?

I've started picking up the nvm.library-build branch, where we strive 
for accepting system libraries as well. IMO that includes the ability to 
ling against a system provided sqlite library.

For the bundled sqlite variant, we should IMO switch to the amalgamation 
distribution.

> If there is still no such policy I personally recommend a policy like
> this (and saved for reference into e.g. "sqlite/README.MTN"): "Monotone
> should can be upgraded to the latest version of SQLite as long as (1)
> this SQLite version it is fully backward compatible to the old on disk
> format (= is able to read it) and at maximum a dump/restore of the
> database is necessary,

What minimum requirement are you proposing here? Fully backward 
compatible (on disk format) *or* dump/restore?

Especially when we allow linking against system libraries, we have to be 
careful and check multiple versions. Maybe even provide a "downgrade" 
feature, i.e. if a user first uses a newish system provided sqlite, then 
downgrades to the monotone provided one by building mtn from source. 
However, dump/restore should do the trick.

> (2) it's API is backward compatible or Monotone's
> use of the SQLite API is at least simultaneous adjusted during the
> upgrade; (3) Monotone after the upgrade still passes its test suite and
> (4) in case of a required non-automated upgrade step hints about this
> are added to file UPGRADING".

Yes, there are pretty obvious, IMO. I don't think we are lacking a 
policy. We need someone to just *do* it. Are you volunteering to test 
monotone against sqlite 3.5.x? Or try integrating the amalgamation 
distribution?

Regards

Markus