On 2018-10-14 20:15 +0200, Antonio wrote:
> Package: man-db
> Version: 2.8.4-2+b1
> Severity: normal
>
> Dear Maintainer,
> why does mandb take about 1-2 minutes, each time, when invoked during
> apt-get dist-upgrade?
I don't think it actually takes that long each time, only when the
database format changes and the whole database needs to be rebuilt from
scratch. This happened twice this year where libgdbm changed its soname
and man -db was rebuilt against the new version.
>From the NEWS file:
,----
| man-db 2.5.3 (17 November 2008)
| ===============================
|
| * man-db now uses GDBM (--with-db=gdbm) in preference to Berkeley DB
| (--with-db=db or --with-db=dbN where N is 1, 2, 3, or 4) by
| default, since hardware improvements have rendered Berkeley DB's
| speed advantages negligible for our purposes and the relatively
| frequent SONAME and on-disk format changes are not worth the
| hassle. Distributors should note that if they follow this change
| then they will need to arrange for databases to be rebuilt on
| upgrade to this version.
`----
Ironically, these days the situation is reversed: GDBM changes SONAME
and database format rather frequently, while it looks Berkeley DB will
be stuck at 5.3 forever after Oracle changed its license to AGPL-3 in
version 6.0.
Cheers,
Sven
