From da700e8fdb065b7e073700c9afa8369d4c60c674 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Ben Johnson Date: Wed, 6 May 2015 09:26:22 -0600 Subject: [PATCH] Add caveat regarding endianness of data files as suggested by Raphael Geronimi. --- README.md | 5 +++++ 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+) diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index 50f5eee..7469f3e 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md @@ -550,6 +550,11 @@ Here are a few things to note when evaluating and using Bolt: However, this is expected and the OS will release memory as needed. Bolt can handle databases much larger than the available physical RAM. +* The data structures in the Bolt database are memory mapped so the data file + will be endian specific. This means that you cannot copy a Bolt file from a + little endian machine to a big endian machine and have it work. For most + users this is not a concern since most modern CPUs are little endian. + * Because of the way pages are laid out on disk, Bolt cannot truncate data files and return free pages back to the disk. Instead, Bolt maintains a free list of unused pages within its data file. These free pages can be reused by later