[ZODB-Dev] packaging zodb in eggs.

[Tim Peters]

[Chris McDonough]
> ...
> Does anyone want to use BTrees outside of a persistent hierarchy?

Oh yes. Some people install ZODB _just_ to use in-memory BTrees, with
no thought of persistence.  This works fine.  Sorted containers are an
important data structure in some algorithms.  In-memory BTrees are
generally suitable in algorithms that might use binary search trees,
or red-black trees, or skip lists, or ... (there are dozens of
variations) were they available, but core Python offers nothing of
this kind.

The BTree source code even has #ifdef's that purport to support
compiling without persistence.  That didn't actually work when I first
saw the BTree code, though, and I kinda doubt it repaired itself in
the years since :-)