Dear Debian Input Method team members,

Currently libpinyin in Debian is using Berkeley DB (libdb-dev). After the
release of Debian 11, Debian has a release goal proposal to remove Berkeley DB
due to its problematic AGPLv3 license issue (for details, see
https://bugs.debian.org/987013 ).

It seems that libpinyin also supports Keyto Cabinet as DBM. I believe we
should consider switching to it to avoid dependency on Berkeley DB. It may
also solve some old problems such
as https://tests.reproducible-builds.org/debian/issues/unstable/berkeley_db_variation_requiring_further_investigation_issue.html
and
https://tests.reproducible-builds.org/debian/issues/unstable/randomness_in_files_generated_by_pinyin_gen_binary_files_issue.html
.

However, I am not sure what would users experience when database format is
switched (e.g., will all data previously stored in old db be lost? Is that a
severe issue?). Even with such side effect, I believe the benefit would be
more significant and we should perform the switch within current development
cycle.

P.S. I am also aware of https://github.com/libpinyin/libpinyin/issues/140 ,
and tkrzw is being reviewed by Debian FTP Masters at
https://ftp-master.debian.org/new/tkrzw_1.0.0+dfsg1-1.html .

Please don't misread the bug, this is not a goal  that is confirmed by
the Release team.

Hi,

在 2021-09-03星期五的 23:51 +0800，Shengjing Zhu写道：

Indeed; that's why I wrote "release goal proposal" instead of "release goal".

Anyway, personally I expect it to occur sometime in future, sooner or later.
We already have a transition slot tracking the removal of libdb at
https://release.debian.org/transitions/html/db5.3-rm.html .

Thanks,
Boyuan Yang

I think we should make a serious attempt to avoid such an interruption
before accomplishing a switch to some other db format. There seems to be
plenty of time.

Boyuan,

I saw you made test uploads to experimental due to this.

I talked with Sebastien Bacher, and with our Ubuntu hats on we are not
very enthusiastic. kyotocabinet is currently not in Ubuntu's "main", so
we would need to file a main inclusion request, and the related review
would result in a symbols file request (compare opencc and marisa).

So if you decide to do this soon, we'll probably revert the switch in
Ubuntu for now.

Wouldn't it be better to wait a bit and see what projects such as perl
and python do? Also, considering that tkrzw is mentioned as a successor
to kyotocabinet, if we would switch to the latter now, we might need to
make yet another switch soon.

Hi,

在 2021-09-23星期四的 17:19 +0200，Gunnar Hjalmarsson写道：
with clean installation, the (ibus-)libpinyin instance does not seem to be
properly generating local user dictionary. So I guess we will not make this
migration without further investigation.

I am also wondering about Ubuntu's plan on libdb removal, though I guess
Ubuntu may keep it forever due to needs from commercial side.

Thanks,
Boyuan Yang

Ack., good to know

I'm not able to tell. Sebastien, who works for Canonical and usually is
well-informed about what's going on, hadn't heard any discussion about
the topic. Maybe the discussion is only held on Debian so far.

We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of
libpinyin, which is due to be installed in the Debian FTP archive.

A summary of the changes between this version and the previous one is
attached.

Thank you for reporting the bug, which will now be closed.  If you
have further comments please address them to 993415@bugs.debian.org,
and the maintainer will reopen the bug report if appropriate.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Boyuan Yang <byang@debian.org> (supplier of updated libpinyin package)

(This message was generated automatically at their request; if you
believe that there is a problem with it please contact the archive
administrators by mailing ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org)
Format: 1.8
Date: Tue, 04 Aug 2026 17:28:37 -0400
Source: libpinyin
Architecture: source
Version: 2.11.91-1~exp1
Distribution: experimental
Urgency: medium
Maintainer: Debian Input Method Team <debian-input-method@lists.debian.org>
Changed-By: Boyuan Yang <byang@debian.org>
Closes: 993415 1119204
Changes:
 libpinyin (2.11.91-1~exp1) experimental; urgency=medium
 .
   * Team upload.
   * New upstream release candidate.
   * debian/NEWS: Add a NEWS entry for the engine switch from
     BerkeleyDB to Tkrzw. All previous user data will be lost
     after the upgrade.
   * debian/rules: Switch from BerkeleyDB to Tkrzw. (Closes: #1119204)
   * debian/control: Switch from BerkeleyDB to Tkrzw. (Closes: #993415)
   * debian/control: Bump debhelper compat to v14.
   * debian/control: Bump Standards-Version to 4.7.4.
   * debian/patches/*.patch: Drop all patches, merged upstream.
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