Re: fast local-file storage for Gnus

[Dave Love <d.love@dl.ac.uk>]

Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:

> I don't know why it's not in Emacs yet,

Partly because no-one has had a need, and perhaps partly because of
configuration issues.

> it seems like a very simple feature to add BerkeleyDB/DBM interfaces
> that can be configured at compile-time like a lot of other GNU
> packages do (at least cfengine, that I know of),

[Ah, the cfengine libdb configuration nightmare...  You'd certainly
have to do better than that!]

I don't know for sure, but I doubt rms would want to insist on libdb
being available to build Emacs.  Otherwise, instances of Emacs
wouldn't be able to run the Gnus distributed with it if you insist on
such support.

> Gnus could probably use fast file databases in aspects other than the
> registry.

You haven't explained why this is necessary.  If just speed is the
issue, how are Emacs hash tables too slow?