[Xapian-discuss] binary db compatibility between versions

[Richard Boulton]

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 03:50:01PM +0100, Ben Campbell wrote:
> Is there a particular policy about if/when the on-disk format for xapian 
> indexes changes between versions?
> 
> (in specific, I'm looking at generating an index offline on a machine 
> using xapian 1.0.5, then upload the files for use on a machine with 
> xapian 1.0.7)

Hmm - I thought we'd documented this somewhere, but I can't find it right
now.

The general idea is that on-disk database formats for a stable backend
(such as "flint" during the 1.0.x release series) shouldn't change between
releases.  However, we weren't able to maintain that during the 1.0 release
series due to needing to fix various bugs.  I believe the format became
fully stable at revision 1.0.3, however.  For what it's worth, we're now
expecting flint to be fully stable - ie, no changes to its database format
will be made until we stop supporting it (in the fairly distant future).

In general, we managed to preserve backwards compatilibity (ie, new
versions of Xapian could access databases created on older versions).

For the particular revisions you mention, I believe there should be no
compatibility issues; but I recommend reading the entries in NEWS for 1.0.6
and 1.0.7 carefully.

-- 
Richard