Bitcoin build/dependancy issues on ubuntu oneiric, wallet format

[graingert]

Ubuntu oneiric does not have the libdb4.8++ or libdb4.8++-dev packages, meaning running or building bitcoin impossible without adding those extra packages to the bitcoin repository.

What do you think would be the best way to go about this:

• Upgrade to libdb5.x++ and cause new wallets to be incompatible with old bitcoin versions
• include the libdb4.8++ packages and potentially cause collisions with other software making this same decision
• Upgrade to libdb5.x, cause new wallets to be incompatible with old bitcoin versions, but make an export option that will potentially be compatible "forever"

The export wallet command could export as a GPG compatible ascii armoured ecdsa key set, a json file, or an XML file

[EDIT] the current leaning in #bitcoin-dev is to go with "include the libdb4.8++ packages and potentially cause collisions with other software making this same decision" Then move to machine-dependant wallets once a bitcoin standard export format has been chosen

[Luke-Jr]

Supposedly bdb 5.x is completely compatible with 4.8, so...

[Matt Corallo]

Upgrade to libdb5.x++ and cause new wallets to be incompatible with old bitcoin versions

Problem here is that we would then have to ship our own libdb5.x packages for maverick, and lucid, which really isnt any better than shipping db4.8 for oneiric.

include the libdb4.8++ packages and potentially cause collisions with other software making this same decision

My personal opinion is to go with this one.  The likelyhood of causing any collisions or issues is fairly low as we can just re-upload the lucid db4.8 source and have launchpad build it for oneiric.

Upgrade to libdb5.x, cause new wallets to be incompatible with old bitcoin versions, but make an export option that will potentially be compatible "forever"

That would be a pain...plus we would want to switch mac/win32 releases to 5.X at the same time...

[graingert]

Supposedly bdb 5.x is completely compatible with 4.8, so...

_If_ this is true then the best thing to go for is using 5.x on oneiric and 4.8 on the older versions

[Luke-Jr]

Supposedly bdb 5.x is completely compatible with 4.8, so...

_If_ this is true then the best thing to go for is using 5.x on oneiric and 4.8 on the older versions

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=621425

[graingert]

It seems bitcoinj/MultiBit are going in a direction to make an interchangeable wallet format.

It would be great if this discussion could be pulled out into the mainline client

https://github.com/jim618/multibit/wiki/Stable%20wallet%20format