gdbm-1.9 released [stable]

[Sergey Poznyakoff]

Hello,

The GDBM team is pleased to announce the release of GDBM version 1.9.

GDBM is a library of database functions that use extensible
hashing and work similarly to the standard UNIX dbm functions.
See http://www.gnu.org/software/gdbm for a detailed description,
including pointers to downloads and online documentation.

Version 1.9 is the first release after a long period of development.
It contains several new features, improvements and compatibility fixes.
See below for a list of user-visible changes.

Here are the compressed sources:
  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gdbm/gdbm-1.9.tar.gz       (542K)

Here are the GPG detached signatures[*]:
  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gdbm/gdbm-1.9.tar.gz.sig

To reduce load on the main server, consider using one of the mirrors
listed at:
  http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

Here are the MD5 and SHA1 checksums:

  1f0e8e6691edd61bdd6b697b8c02528d  gdbm-1.9.tar.gz
  a769d193c6af0c6f884d5c599119743ec42aafb9  gdbm-1.9.tar.gz

[*] You can use either of the above signature files to verify that
the corresponding file (without the .sig suffix) is intact.  First,
be sure to download both the .sig file and the corresponding tarball.
Then, run the following command:

  gpg --verify gdbm-1.9.tar.gz.sig

If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
then run this command to import it:

  gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 55D0C732

and rerun the `gpg --verify' command.

This release was bootstrapped with the following tools:
  Autoconf 2.63
  Automake 1.11.1
  Libtool 2.2.7a

The list of noteworthy changes follows:

* Memory mapping

To speed up I/O operations, mmap(2) is used when available.
If need be, it can be disabled at compile time using
--disable-memory-mapped-io, and at run time by giving GDBM_NOMMAP flag
to gdbm_open.

* Changes in compatibility mode

The changes below fix several long-standing bugs in ndbm compatibility
code, which made it impossible to use GDBM with Sendmail and Postfix.
Now that they are fixed, GDBM can be used with these MTAs. 

** Locking is disabled.

Neither ndbm nor dbm functions lock their files. This complies with the
POSIX requirements.

This bug was reported, in particular, in
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=663932

** Do not link pag to dir.

Instead of linking pag to dir as previous versions did, GDBM now
creates a separate dir file.  Consequently, dbm_pagfno and
dbm_dirfno return different file descriptors and can be locked
independently.

When opening an existing database as a writer, GDBM determines
if dir is linked to pag, and if so breaks the link and creates
a new dir file.  When such a database is opened in a read-only
mode, GDBM does not attempt to alter the link.

* gdbm_setopt

New options are implemented for use with the gdbm_setopt function.
In particular, a set of options is provided for retrieving various
database parameters, such as the file name, memory mapping status,
etc.

* The testgdbm program is installed

Testgdbm is an interactive tool for manipulating GDBM database files.
It allows you to view and update existing databases, export
them to the portable flat file format and to create new database files.

* A testsuite is provided.

* Documentation is improved.

--

Regards,
Sergey