[elephant-devel] BDB stores don't work on my 32-bit Debian box either

[Sebastian Tennant]

Quoth "Leslie P. Polzer" <sky at viridian-project.de>:
>> Would an elephant developer please help.  (I'm assuming you're not a developer
>> Leslie). I really want to start actually using elephant!!!.

> I guess you could say there are two somewhat active Elephant developers right
> now, and I'm one of them.

I'm sorry Leslie.  It's just that you're not listed under 'Authors' at:

 http://common-lisp.net/project/elephant/about.html

Ian (Eslick) is.

>> I'm starting to wonder if many people really use elephant,

> Ian and me are using it every day in GNU/Linux environments..

Two isn't many :)

>> In short, I'm starting to become pretty disillusioned with elephant in
>> particular and the state of Common Lisp libraries generally.

> I'm sorry to hear this, and I can't really agree. It's true that
> sometimes stuff doesn't work out of the box, but that's the case
> everywhere unless the project is *very* well-staffed and used
> by a large number of people at the same time.

You're right.  I suppose what I'm really saying is that it's a shame a large
number of people aren't using these tools.

>> Is it because I'm using bleeding edge versions of everything I wonder?  

> Please, be patient. This is unpaid support and from what I've gathered
> so far your questions on this and other lists have all been answered
> within a few days maximum.

Again you are right.  I have had responses within a day or two at most and I'm
very grateful for every response I receive.  I also fully appreciate that no
one is paid for helping me, or anyone else, with their problems.

My experience with elephant has been particularly trying and my frustration got
the better of me last night, that's all.

> People's systems can differ vastly (e.g. libraries, bus width, Lisp
> implementation) and not all of these issues can be figured out
> immediately, no matter how competent the person at the other end is.

Understood, however my two systems (clbuild/64-bit/SBCL/MacOSX and
clbuild/32-bit/SBCL/Debian Lenny) are pretty common platforms are they not?

What's more, it's not obscure corner/edge cases which are causing me problems -
I haven't been able to get elephant working sufficiently well to even begin
evaluating it for my needs.

Anyway, moaning is pointless.  Action is what's needed.  A few prominent
notices on the elephant's website would have saved me hours, if not days.

 1) If you use clbuild - edit wnpp-projects so that elephant-1.0 is pulled from
    darcs.
 2) Install UFFI (available from URL) and ensure that the 'real' uffi.asd is
    found by ASDF first.
 3) If you want to use a BerkeleyDB store, disregard the manual and install
    Berkeley DB version 4.7 (from URL).  Better still, update the manual.
 4) If you have a 64-bit machine make sure you compile a 64-bit BerkeleyDB.
    Elephant will expect it. Include instructions for said compilation.

There are probably other things too, but I can't think of them at the moment.
I'm happy to do these things myself.  I'll post a patched elephant.texinfo
here, but what about the rest of the above notices?  Where do you think they
should go?  In a README, or on the website perhaps?

Seb
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