DB_File Version 1.51 13th May 1997 Copyright (c) 1995/6/7 Paul Marquess. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. WARNING The support for Berkeley DB 2.0 in this release should be considered as beta quality code. The support for Berkeley DB 1.x should be ok. DESCRIPTION ----------- DB_File is a module which allows Perl programs to make use of the facilities provided by Berkeley DB version 1. (DB_File can be built version 2 of Berkeley DB, but it will only support the 1.x features), A future version of DB_File will support the new features available in Berkeley DB 2.x. Berkeley DB is a C library which provides a consistent interface to a number of database formats. DB_File provides an interface to all three of the database types (hash, btree and recno) currently supported by Berkeley DB. For further details see the documentation included at the end of the file DB_File.pm. PREREQUISITES ------------- Before you can build DB_File you need to have the following installed on your system: * Perl 5.003 or greater. * Berkeley DB. For version 1 of Berkeley DB either 1.85 or 1.86 are best. For version 2 of Berkeley DB you must have 2.0.5 or greater. The official web site for Berkeley DB is http://www.sleepycat.com/db. The ftp equivalent is ftp.sleepycat.com:/pub. Both versions 1 and 2 of Berkeley DB are available there. Alternatively, Berkeley DB version 1 is available at your nearest CPAN archive (see the section on CPAN in the perlmod manpage for a list) in src/misc/db.1.85.tar.gz If you are running IRIX, then get Berkeley DB version 1 from http://reality.sgi.com/ariel. It has the patches necessary to compile properly on IRIX 5.3. BUILDING THE MODULE ------------------- Assuming you have met all the prerequisites, building the module should be relatively straightforward. The first step is to edit the file CONFIG to suit you local installation. Instructions are given in the file. The module can now be built and tested using this sequence of commands: perl Makefile.PL make make test NOTE: If you have a very old version of Berkeley DB, three of the tests in the recno test hasness may fail (tests 51, 53 and 55). You can safely ignore the errors if you're never going to use the broken functionality (recno databases with a modified bval). Otherwise you'll have to upgrade your DB library. INSTALLATION ------------ make install FEEDBACK -------- How to report a problem with DB_File. To help me help you, I need of the following information: 1. The version of Perl and the operating system name and version you are running. If you are running a newish version of Perl, the output from running "perl -V" will tell me all I need to know. If your perl doesn't understand the -V flag, then not only do you have quite an old version of Perl, you very likely have an old version of DB_File. You should consider upgrading. The problem you have might already be fixed. 2. The version of DB_File you have. If you have successfully installed DB_File, this one-liner will tell you: perl -e 'use DB_File; print "DB_File ver $DB_File::VERSION\n"' If you haven't installed DB_File then search DB_File for a line like this: $VERSION = "1.20" ; 3. The version of Berkeley DB you have installed. The most recent recommended versions are 1.85, 1.86 and 2.0.5. Again, if you have an older version, think about upgrading. One point to note if you are considering upgrading Berkeley DB - the file formats for 1.85, 1.86 and 2.0 are all different. 4. If you are having problems building DB_File, send me a complete log of what happened. 5. Now the difficult one. If you think you have found a bug in DB_File and you want me to fix it, you will *greatly* enhance the chances of me being able to track it down by sending me a small self-contained Perl script that illustrates the problem you are encountering. Include a summary of what you think the problem is and a log of what happens when you run the script, in case I can't reproduce your problem on my system. If possible, don't have the script dependent on an existing 20Meg database. If the script you send me can create the database itself then that is preferred. I realise that in some cases this is easier said than done, so if you can only reproduce the problem in your existing script, then you can post me that if you want. Just don't expect me to find your problem in a hurry, or at all. :-) CHANGES ------- See the Changes file. Paul Marquess