Version 1.23, 2022-02-04
* Bucket cache switched from balanced tree to hash table
Change suggested by Terence Kelly.
* Speed up flushing the changed buckets on disk
* New option codes for gdbm_setopt
** GDBM_GETDBFORMAT
Return the database format.
** GDBM_GETDIRDEPTH
Return the directory depth, i.e. the number of initial (most significant)
bits in hash value that are interpreted as index to the directory.
** GDBM_GETBUCKETSIZE
Return maximum number of keys per bucket.
** GDBM_GETCACHEAUTO
Return the status of the automatic cache adjustment.
** GDBM_SETCACHEAUTO
Enable or disable automatic cache adjustment.
Version 1.22
* Fix file header validation
* Fix key verification in sequential access
* Fix testing with DejaGNU 1.6.3
* Fix stack overflow in print_usage
* Fix a leak of avail entry on pushing a new avail block
The leak would occur if the original avail table had odd number of entries.
* New gdbmtool variables: errorexit, errormask, trace, timing
"Errorexit" and "errormask" control which GDBM errors would cause the
program termination and emitting a diagnostic message,
correspondingly. Both variables are comma-delimited lists of error
codes.
The "trace" variable enables tracing of the gdbmtool commands.
The "timing" variable, when set, instructs gdbmtool to print time
spent in each command it runs.
* New gdbmtool options: -t (--trace), and -T (--timing)
Version 1.21, 2021-09-02
* Crash tolerance
By default it is possible for an abrupt crash (e.g., power failure,
OS kernel panic, or application process crash) to corrupt the gdbm
database file. A new Linux-only mechanism enables applications to
recover the database state corresponding to the most recent
successful gdbm_sync() call before the crash. See the chapter 17
"Crash Tolerance" in the GDBM manual.
* New database file format: numsync
The new "numsync" database format is designed to better support
crash tolerance. To create a database in numsync format, the gdbm_open
(or gdbm_fd_open) function must be given the GDBM_NEWDB|GDBM_NUMSYNC
flags. The GDBM_NUMSYNC flag also takes effect when used together
with GDBM_WRCREAT, provided that the new file is created.
New function gdbm_convert() is provided for converting the databases
from standard GDBM format to numsync and vice versa.
The gdbmtool tool can also be used for converting databases between
these two formats.
* Changes in gdbmtool
** Fix string output in non-ASCII encodings
Printable multi-byte sequences are correctly represented on output.
This also fixes octal representation of unprintable characters.
** The filename variable
This variable supplies the name of database file for use in "open"
command, if the latter is called without arguments. If "open" is
called with the file name argument, the "filename" variable is
initialized to this value.
** The fd variable
If set, its value must be an open file descriptor referring to a
GDBM database file. The "open" command will use gdbm_fd_open
function to use this file. Upon closing the database, this
descriptor will be closed and the variable will be unset.
The file descriptor to use can also be supplied using the
-d (--db-descriptor) command line option.
** The format variable
Defines the format in which new databases will be created. Allowed
values are: "standard" (default) and "numsync".
** New commands: upgrade and downgrade
The "upgrade" command converts current database to the numsync
(extended) format. The "downgrade" command converts current database
to the standard format.
** New command: snapshot
The "snapshot" command is part of the new crash tolerance support.
Given the names of two snapshot files, it analyzes them and selects
the one to be used for database recovery. See the GDBM manual,
section 17.5 "Manual crash recovery" for a detailed discussion of its
use.
Version 1.20, 2021-06-17
* New bucket cache
The bucket cache support has been rewritten from scratch. The new
bucket cache code provides for significant speed up of search
operations.
* Change mmap prereading strategy
Pre-reading of the memory mapper regions, introduced in version 1.19
can be advantageous only when doing intensive look-ups on a read-only
database. It degrades performance otherwise, especially if doing
multiple inserts. Therefore, this version introduces a new flag
to gdbm_open: GDBM_PREREAD. When given, it enables pre-reading of
memory mapped regions.
See https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/18884 for details.
Version 1.19 - 2020-12-23
* Pre-read the memory mapped regions on systems that support it.
This speeds up operations on big databases.
* gdbmtool: tagged initialization of structured data
Initializers for structured data can be given in tagged form, e.g.:
store somekey { status=2, id={a,u,x}, name="foo" }
* Bugfixes:
** Preserve locking type during database reorganization
Version 1.18.1 - 2018-10-27
* Fix debian bug 910911
This restores backward compatibility with databases created by version
1.8 (and some later versions, with mmapped I/O disabled).
See https://bugs.debian.org/910911 for a detailed description.
Version 1.18 - 2018-08-21
* Bugfixes:
** Fix directory entry validation
See https://puszcza.gnu.org.ua/bugs/?402
Directory validation function would falsely report corruption after
several directory reallocations.
** Fix improper use of GDBM_DEBUG macro
See https://puszcza.gnu.org.ua/bugs/?401
** Fix spurious error from gdbm_dump and gdbm_export
The functions incorrectly reported as error the GDBM_ITEM_NOT_FOUND
status, which is reported when upon normal termination of iteration
over the database keys.
** Make sure gdbm_sync always returns a meaningful value
See https://puszcza.gnu.org.ua/bugs/?400
Version 1.17 - 2018-07-30
* int gdbm_close and gdbm_sync
Both functions now return 0 on success. On error, they return -1
and set gdbm_errno and errno to the appropriate error codes.
* Fix bug in gdbm_dump function
The function did not clear the GDBM_ITEM_NOT_FOUND error marker, which
is set upon its normal termination.
Version 1.16 - 2018-06-27
* Maintain sorting order of the available block list after coalescing
This is a very long-standing bug, dated back to the time when optional
coalescing of available blocks with the newly released block was
introduced. Merging the released block with an adjacent block of
available space would clobber the sorting order of the available list.
The bug was discovered due to strict database consistency checks,
introduced in version 1.15.
The fix introduced in this version will silently restore the proper
sorting order of available block list before its use.
* Improve block merging algorithm
New implementation of block merging algorithm will correctly handle
both left and right-adjacent blocks.
Version 1.15 - 2018-06-15
* Extensive database consistency checking
GDBM tries to detect inconsistencies in input database files as
early as possible. When an inconcistency is detected, a helpful
diagnostics is returned and the database is marked as needing
recovery. From this moment on, any GDBM function trying to access
the database will immediately return error code (instead of
eventually segfaulting as previous versions did). In order to
reconstruct the database and return it to healthy state, the
gdbm_recover function should be used.
Special thanks to Lionel Debroux and Craig Young for investing
their time and efforts in testing and providing valuable feedback.
* Improved error checking
* Removed gdbm-1.8.3 compatibility layer
* Commands can be given to gdbmtool in the command line
The syntax is:
gdbmtool DBNAME COMMAND [ARGS...]
Multiple commands are separated by semicolon (take care to escape it),
e.g.:
gdbmtool t.db count\; avail
* Fixed data conversion bugs in storing structured keys or content
* New member in the gdbm_recovery structure: duplicate_keys.
Upon return from gdbm_recover, this member holds the number of keys
that has not been recovered, because the same key had already been stored
in the database. The actual number of stored keys is thus
recovered_keys - duplicate_keys.
* New error codes.
GDBM_BAD_BUCKET "Malformed bucket header"
GDBM_BAD_HEADER "Malformed database file header"
GDBM_BAD_AVAIL "Malformed avail_block"
GDBM_BAD_HASH_TABLE "Malformed hash table"
GDBM_BAD_DIR_ENTRY "Invalid directory entry"
pkglint --only "https instead of http" -r -F
With manual adjustments afterwards since pkglint 19.4.4 fixed a few
indentations in unrelated lines.
This mainly affects projects hosted at SourceForce, as well as
freedesktop.org, CTAN and GNU.
Version 1.14.1 - 2018-01-03
* Increment soname current version number.
Version 1.14 - 2018-01-01
* Make sure created databases are byte-for-byte reproducible
This fixes two longstanding bugs: (1) when allocating database file
header blocks, the unused memory is filled with zeroes; (2) when expanding
a mmapped memory area, the added extent is filled with zeroes.
* Fix build with --enable-gdbm-export
* Make gdbm_error global variable thread safe.
* Fix possible segmentation violation in gdbm_setopt
* Fix handling of group headers in --help output.
* gdbm_fetch, gdbm_firstkey, and gdbm_nextkey behavior
If the requested key was not found, these functions return datum with
dptr pointing to NULL and set gdbm_errno to GDBM_ITEM_NOT_FOUND (in
prior releases, gdbm_errno was set to GDBM_NO_ERROR),
If an error occurred, dptr is set to NULL, and gdbm_errno to
the error code.
In any case gdbm_errno is guaranteed to have meaningful value upon
return.
* Error handling
In previous versions of GDBM, fatal errors (such as write error while
storing the key/data pair or bucket) caused immediate termination of
the program via call to exit(3). This is no longer the case.
Starting from this version, if a fatal error occurrs while modifying
the database file, that database is marked as needing recovery and
gdbm_errno is set to GDBM_NEED_RECOVERY. Calls to any GDBM functions,
except gdbm_recover, will then return immediately with the same error
code.
The function gdbm_recover examines the database file and fixes
eventual inconsistencies. Upon successful return it clears the error
state and makes the database operational again.
For backward compatibility, the fatal_func argument to gdbm_open is
retained and its functionality is not changed. If it is not NULL, the
new error handling procedures are disabled, the function it points to
will be called upon fatal errors. When it returns, exit(1) will be
called.
* Per-database error codes
In addition to gdbm_error global variable, the most recent error state
is saved in the GDBM_FILE structure. This facilitates error handling
when operating multiple GDBM databases simultaneously.
* New configuration variable COMPATINCLUDEDIR
When used with --enable-libgdbm-compat, this variable points to the
directory where the headers file dbm.h and ndbm.h will be installed.
Use this variable to avoid conflicts with already installed headers.
E.g.:
./configure --enable-libgdbm-compat COMPATINCLUDEDIR=/usr/include/gdbm
problem. Thanks, martin!
Changes:
Version 1.11, 2013-12-25
* Improved dump format.
A new dump format is implemented, which encodes all data in base64 and
stores not only key/data pairs, but also the original database file
metadata, such as file name, mode and ownership. Files in this format
can be sent without additional encapsulation over transmission
channels that normally allow only ASCII data. Dumps in this format
allow for restoring an exact copy of the database, including file
ownership and privileges.
* New function: gdbm_count
int gdbm_count (GDBM_FILE *file, gdbm_count *count);
Counts records in `file' and stores the result in the memory location
pointed to by `count'.
* New utilities: gdbm_dump and gdbm_load.
Gdbm_dump creates a plain-text dump of the GDBM database. This dump
can be used to create an exact copy of the database afterward.
The gdbm_load performs the reverse: given the dump file, it creates a
GDBM database. Apart from native GDBM dump formats, it also understands
the format generated by Berkeley DB db_dump utility. Thus, an easy
way to convert a Berkeley DB database to GDBM is:
db_dump input.db | gdbm_load output.db
* gdbmtool
The gdbmtool utility allows you to examine, modify or create GDBM
databases. It provides an easy-to-use interactive shell and can
be used for scripting. One of the unique features of gdbmtool is that
it allows to define datum structures for key and content parts, similarly
to the C "struct" declarations, and to input and display such
structured data.
* Internationalization
This version of GDBM is fully internationalized. The following
localizations are available: Finnish, German, Japanese, Polish and Ukrainian.
* Support for close-on-exec flag in gdbm_open (see GDBM_CLOEXEC in the docs).
* Improve testgdbm command system
The testgdbm tool now supports multicharacter commands.
* Bugfixes
