[ldb] Moving basic libs to a new repo and release them as a separate package

[Andrew Bartlett]

On Thu, 2006-02-23 at 14:55 -0500, simo wrote:
> In the Samba Project we created a number of tools that are not only very
> useful and shared between our branches, but also interesting for other
> projects.
> 
> I would like to propose we move the current ldb, tdb and talloc
> libraries to a new branch named samba-base-libs or something like that
> and release them as .so/.a libraries. Then make our Samba trees check
> for them to be installed on the system and require them to build and run
> them.
> 
> Being a separate project I see some advantages:
> - Other projects will find it easier to adopt the software as they will
>   find it easier to provide it to their user in a tiny package without
>   requiring them to install samba

This is good, but how does it differ from the current Makefiles in
lib/ldb and lib/tdb?  Can't these just be turned into packages for this
effect?

> - More testing/development coming from other projects
> - Better sharing inside the various team trees, fixes flows into the
>   separate libraries and we do not risk to miss fixes from one branch
>   to the other

This is something I think needs work in particular, and I'm not
convinced this will solve it.  tdb has been 'spun out' before, and sits
unmaintained on sf.net.  

I do think we need to ensure we ship with one version of tdb,
particularly before the cluster experiments get to far with their own
forks...

> - Stabilization of the interfaces
> 
> I think tdb and talloc are mature good candidates, ldb is still under
> being actively worked on but there is a lot of interest in it outside
> the samba team so providing it as a separate tool even in beta stages
> seem good thing to me.
> 
> I'd like comments on this proposal, from all the interested parties.

The main issues I see are to do with the build farm (we can't really get
the owners to install the particular versions of talloc/tdb/ldb to keep
the builds passing), and the implications for an eventual Samba4
release.

I think that the current situation works well for Samba, but less so for
the other projects.  Perhaps the situation is SVN references, or import
scripts (ethereal imports pidl, another 'samba project').  

Andrew Bartlett

-- 
Andrew Bartlett                                http://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team           http://samba.org
Student Network Administrator, Hawker College  http://hawkerc.net
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