<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 TRANSITIONAL//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; CHARSET=UTF-8">
<META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="GtkHTML/3.3.2">
</HEAD>
<BODY>
This is my third attempt to send this message. I have removed the HTML that I had included<BR>
and the attachments to see if a spam filter is blocking this or something. If this go through, I <BR>
will attempt again to post the remainder of the message.<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
Dear Elephant Devel team,<BR>
<BR>
Here is my good-enough-to-be-released extension of elephant to use CL-SQL as a back-end (with PostGres).<BR>
<BR>
Below is the documentation that I wrote (It's in the texinfo, but I thought you might like to read it directly, so I pasted it here.)<BR>
Please find attached a tar file containing all of the new files, and additionally a file containing the cvs diff of the files that<BR>
already existed in the repository.<BR>
<BR>
If your interested in this, you should probably read the documentation below. The code change is so great that <BR>
I doubt you can see much from the diff; the best way to really analyze would be to create a separate branch in CVS and <BR>
allow me to commit my stuff there, so that one can easily checkout the whole branch.<BR>
<BR>
In a nutshell, I have extended Elephant to utilized CL-SQL (on top of PostGres) as a back-end in addition to <BR>
BerkeleyDB. Some people may think this pointless; others may be pleased with the more permissive licensing of <BR>
PostGres, or see this as a step to supporting, for example, SQLite. Addtionally, this version is a "mutli-repository" version<BR>
in that many repositories can be open at the same time, and data can be migrated between them, without regard to <BR>
the implementation strategy that underlies the repository.<BR>
<BR>
I commend the Elephant developers on the good set of tests they had; I have expanded them to allow testing<BR>
on multiple repository types and to test migration.<BR>
<BR>
I know the current owners of Elephant are looking for a new owner. That, and the fact that some people might<BR>
like Elephant the way it is and hate the apparent complexity that I have added, or might really like what I have done,<BR>
creates a complicated set of questions we have to answer:<BR>
<BR>
1) Who will own Elephant?<BR>
2) Should this be the next version of Elephant, or should it be a fork (that is, a completely different project, maybe<BR>
"Bignose" or something)?<BR>
<BR>
I don't know how many people use Elephant or are on this list. I enjoyed it until I hit the BerkeleyDB licensing<BR>
restriction. I definitely plan to use this work that I have done in a website moving forward, and will be maintaining<BR>
it, one way or the other.<BR>
<BR>
I have not yet offered to own Elephant, since I am not an expert LISP coder, have never managed a large open-source<BR>
project before, don't know who is using it, don't plan to pay for any lisp system, and don't know how much time is <BR>
involved in maintaining such a package, and am not an expert on BerkeleyDB. However, if nobody else has volunteered<BR>
and Ben can't do it, I suppose that I must be better than nothing at all.<BR>
<BR>
Please express some sort of opinion. I spent 5 solid weeks on this; which in hindsight was probably a three-week <BR>
waste of time compared to just implementing my own serializer, which would have served my purpose.<BR>
However, now that it is presentable, I certainly hope that someone in addition to myself will benefit from it.<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
</BODY>
</HTML>