Tom, I thank you and the team who maintain and update Xastir. It is a thank less labor of love. I am just a user but programming is out of my league.
Stan Sent from my iPhone > On May 27, 2024, at 11:11 AM, Tom Russo <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Mon, May 27, 2024 at 12:35:44PM +1000, we recorded a bogon-computron > collision of the <[email protected]> flavor, containing: >> Hi Everyone, >> One of the port system maintainers of FreeBSD has proposed the removal of >> the dependancy on libdb5 (Berkeley DB 5) from Xastir as libdb5 is deprecated >> and no longer maintained. Not being in the US I’ve never used Tiger maps >> and I don't really know if removing the Tiger map caching capability will >> make them unusable, however given the availability of other maps and the >> fact libdb5 is no longer being maintained I’ve approved the change. > > I'm one of the folks who curates the Xastir repository at Github and > "maintains" the software there . I also use Xastir on FreeBSD though I do not > use the port at all and build it myself all the time. > > The libdb5 capability in Xastir is not solely for Tiger maps, even though it > is likely that the documentation makes wild, outdated assertions to that > effect. > > Tiger map servers themselves are long gone and all Tiger-specific map code > removed from Xastir back in 2019. So DB5 support has nothing to do with > Tiger maps in the US anymore, even though that was the reason it was > initially implemented. > > In fact, BDB5 is used for general caching of online maps *other* than tiled > map sets like OpenStreetMaps (a completely different technique is used for > downloading and caching of OSM tiles). WMS map servers would all make use of > caching to prevent unnecessary re-download of map images. WMS servers for > online maps are still plentiful both in and out of the US, and in fact just > last year we helped a user in Finland get Xastir working with a WMS server > from the Finish Land Survey (c.f. > https://github.com/Xastir/Xastir/discussions/211). > > Building Xastir without Berkeley DB support would mean that all users of > WMS servers would be downloading new images with every map pan or zoom > operation because downloaded images would no longer be cached. They would > still be usable, but would be slow and wasteful. > > Nobody has gone to through the exercise of trying to adapt the DB5 code in > Xastir to use a maintained version of Berkeley DB. I don't even know how > different db18 is from db5 at this point. At a minimum, even if the API > hasn't changed significantly, the hamfisted technique used in Xastir's > configure script to find DB headers and libraries would need modification. > > I have opened an issue on Xastir's issue tracker to see if we can get a > volunteer to look into updating the code to make use of a supported version of > Berkeley DB since DB5 is so ancient. > (https://github.com/Xastir/Xastir/issues/217) > > I am not, however, in a position to volunteer to take over maintaining the > Xastir port in the FreeBSD ports tree, though I'm perfectly willing to submit > PRs with patches from time to time when we release new versions of the code. > > -- > Tom Russo KM5VY > Tijeras, NM > > echo "prpv_a'rfg_cnf_har_cvcr" | sed -e 's/_/ /g' | tr [a-m][n-z] [n-z][a-m] > > _______________________________________________ > Xastir mailing list > [email protected] > http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir _______________________________________________ Xastir mailing list [email protected] http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir
