Parent Directories

Directory guile-gdbm

Introduction =========================================================

   Guile-GDBM is a compiled Guile module that provides Scheme level
   access to the GNU dbm library.  It was originally written by
   Martin Grabmüller <mgrabmue@cs.tu-berlin.de> and is released
   under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3.  You can
   get the latest version from directory:

      http://www.gnuvola.org/software/guile-gdbm/

   Please send bug reports to Thien-Thi Nguyen <ttn@gnuvola.org>,
   the current maintainer of Guile-GDBM.


Getting Started ======================================================

   See INSTALL for generic installation instructions.  Briefly:

     ./configure
     make
     make check             # optional but recommended
     make install
     make installcheck      # optional but recommended

   At this time there are no extra ./configure options, but you can
   type "./configure --help" to see the standard help anyway.  The
   "make check" and "make installcheck" tests are normally silent.
   You can use "make check DEBUG=1" to see output.

   Building and installing the distribution gives you:

   - a libtool library, gdbm.la, and support files
     installed in ${guilelibsitedir}/database/

   - the info manual, guile-gdbm.info
     installed in ${prefix}/info

   Additionally, if "guile-tools make-module-catalog" is available, it
   is run to update the module catalog in ${guilelibsitedir}.

   The value of ${guilelibsitedir} is determined by the `configure'
   script based on the result of running the command: "guile-config
   re-prefix-info pkglibdir".


What Is Included =====================================================

   The following procedures for manipulating GNU dbm files are
   exported:

     gdbm?
     gdbm-version
     gdbm-open
     gdbm-close!
     gdbm-store!
     gdbm-fetch
     gdbm-exists?
     gdbm-delete!
     gdbm-first-key
     gdbm-next-key
     gdbm-reorganize!
     gdbm-sync!
     gdbm-setopt!
     gdbm-fdesc


What Is Not Included =================================================

   Support for the DBM/NDBM compatibility functions of GNU dbm is not
   available.

   Also a possibility to store, say, a hash table with string keys and
   values into a GNU dbm file with one procedure call would be nice.

   I hope to add most of these in the future, probably as driven by my
   own and other users' requirements.  Contributions are, of course,
   very welcome.


Upgrading Tips =======================================================

   Starting with Guile-GDBM 0.1.x, the libtool library (ltlib) that
   implements module `(database gdbm)' is installed in the directory
   ${guilelibsitedir}/database instead of ${libdir}.  This means if
   you have installed previous versions of Guile-GDBM, there will be
   undesirable leftover files in ${libdir}.  There are three ways to
   remove them:

   (1) If you have the build tree from the previous version of
       Guile-GDBM, you can do "make uninstall" there.

   (2) You can do "rm -f ${libdir}/libguile-gdbm-*" manually.  (You
       will also need to determine the value of ${libdir} manually.)

   (3) You can make use of an upgrade facility provided with this and
       later versions of Guile-GDBM and do "make check-000-libdir" to
       list the leftover files, and "make clean-000-libdir" to delete
       them (using the exact same command as in (2)).  This method is
       recommended over the others.

   Note that the "000" are all zeroes; it signifies the ltlib version
   number and has nothing to do with the Guile-GDBM package version.