Re: sqlite3

[Tomas Hlavaty]

On Tue 14 Dec 2021 at 19:03, Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> wrote:
> Tomas Hlavaty <tom@logand.com> writes:
>
>> The issue is that Emacs now depends on sqlite.
>
> Emacs depends on libsqlite3 the same way it depends on librsvg.

At the moment.

And those are very different things with different consequences.

> I think having database support in Emacs is going to be useful,

That seems rather vague reason.

"My" Emacs supported RDBMS since more than a decade ago:

   https://logand.com/sw/dbquery/file/README.html
   https://logand.com/sw/dbquery/file/dbquery.el.html
   https://logand.com/sw/dbquery/files.html

   dbquery is a collection of sql drivers and high level code for
   Emacs-Lisp and Common Lisp with easy to use text based protocol based
   on symbolic expressions.

I guess other people did something similar.  It is not difficult.

But the question is, should a database be in core Emacs?
Should a database be in the Emacs process?

What will be the consequences?

> and there's been a number of things that's been suggested could use it
> instead of the current slow mechanisms, like the Gnus registry and
> org-roam.

The consequences will likely be, that more and more things will not work
without that database.

You suggest two examples.
I can see more exciting developments, e.g.
imagine elfeed does not block Emacs for seconds before quitting;
or imagine elfeed with full text search;
or notmuch email reader using Emacs built in database.

But I am still not sure including sqlite is a good thing.
I imagine that once sqlite is in Emacs, it will be easier to
dump everything into it and call it a day.

Imagine git built on top of sqlite.
Would that have been better?

Is there really not a better solution than depending on sqlite?

I am quite curious, how this will turn out.